UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 


BY 


ANNIE  PAYSON  CALL 


"  To  get  a  true  idea  of  real  non-resistance,  we  must  begin  by 
associating  it  with  all  the  qualities  that  make  for  strength." 
—  ABTHUB  A.  CABEY,  in  "  New  Nerves  for  Old." 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 
1918 


Copyright,  1918, 
BY  LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 


All  rights  reserved 


^ 
J 


fcA 
7<1  O 

C  i2  -vie 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAQH 

1  THE  LAW 1 

2  "  CONQUER  BEGINNINGS  "    .        .        .        .17 

j. 

3  "THE  OTHER  MAN" 33 

N         4  IN  A  HOSPITAL 51 

^   N 

5  ABOUT  SUFFERING        .....  66 

6  THE  POWER  OF  CLEANNESS         ...  80 

7  SHELL  SHOCK        93 

8  THE  WILL  TO  USE  THE  BAYONET       .        .123 
4           9  DEATH  AND  DYING 137 

10  COURAGE  152 


V         THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH  .  169 


NERVES  AND  THE   WAR 

CHAPTER   1 

The  Law 

NERVES  have  everything  to  do 
with  the  war.  A  man  cannot 
move  a  finger  without  a  nerve 
to  take  the  message  from  the  brain  to 
the  muscles ;  certainly  he  cannot  fire  a 
gun,  or  even  aim  it.  And  a  man  who 
cannot  use  his  nerves  as  they  should  be 
used,  to  direct  his  muscles  as  they 
should  be  directed,  is  not  equipped  to 
the  limit  of  his  best  possible  power, 
either  for  fighting  himself  or  for  guiding 
and  training  other  men  to  fight. 

Not  many  men  to-day  are  so  equipped. 
True,    we   speak   commonly   of   a   man 
i 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

having  "nerve."  But  if  you  say  that 
a  man  has  "nerve",  the  meaning  is 
generally  taken  to  be  that  a  man  has 
grit,  has  courage  —  sometimes  that  he 
has  too  much  presumption  in  deal- 
ing with  other  men.  Never,  I  take  it, 
does  it  mean  that  he  has  permanent 
and  well-balanced  self-control,  but  only 
spurts  of  it,  and  that  generally  for  a 
selfish  end  of  his  own.  A  man  with  so- 
called  "nerve"  will  prove  as  weak  as 
water  if  you  know  where  to  prick  him. 
And  often  there  comes  in  such  a  man's 
life  a  time  and  place  where  Fate,  —  if 
we  may  call  it  that,  —  does  prick  him, 
and  then  the  man  of  "nerve"  goes  to 
pieces  and  has  "nerves." 

It  seems  a  great  pity  that  "nerves" 
should  stand  for  what  is  unhealthy, 
unwholesome,  and  even  at  times  de- 
generate. For  "nerves"  are  the  great- 
est blessing  a  man  can  have  in  this 
2 


THE  LAW 

whole  world.  In  themselves  they  are 
the  symbols  of  all  that  is  useful,  in- 
teresting, and  healthy.  Nerves  are  the 
connecting  link  between  this  world  and 
the  other.  Nerves  touch  a  man's  body 
on  one  side  and  his  soul  on  the  other. 
Nerves  are  the  channel  over  which  a 
man's  energy  travels.  Therefore  the  true 
management  of  nerves  is  literally  the 
true  management  of  the  whole  man  — 
by  himself.  And  you  cannot  manage  a 
German  until  you  have  managed  your- 
self. 

In  order  to  conquer  yourself  you  need 
two  things :  first,  saving  or  conserving 
power,  which  you  will  find  comes  from 
physical  and  mental  relaxation  at  such 
times  as  your  body  and  mind  are  off 
duty  ;  and,  second,  directing  power,  which 
will  come  from  concentration  toward  the 
particular  job  at  hand  when  body  and 
mind  are  on  duty.  It  is  easy  to  see 
3 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

that  these  two  forces  are  reciprocal.  Re- 
laxation while  you  are  at  a  rest  billet 
will  simply  afford  you  so  much  surplus 
energy  when  you  find  yourself  in  the 
front  line  again. 

Most  men  do  not  fully  appreciate  that 
true  will-power  is  the  source  of  these 
two  forces.  A  man's  brain  is  directed 
by  his  will  —  if  he  did  but  know  it. 
Many  a  time  have  I  heard  a  man  com- 
plain of  having  a  sick  brain  when  I 
could  answer  truly,  "The  trouble  is  with 
your  will,  sir,"  —  and  such  an  answer 
has  always  proved  itself  true.  If  the 
man  recognizes  the  truth  and  rouses  his 
will  to  direct  his  brain  into  wholesome 
channels,  the  brain  responds  and  gets 
well.  The  will  rules  the  brain  by  in- 
hibiting its  use  in  ways  that  are  con- 
trary to  law,  and  by  guiding  it  to  act 
in  ways  that  are  according  to  law.  Too 
many  times  the  self-will  is  mistaken 
4 


THE  LAW 

for  the  normal  will  and  there  is  often 
trouble  in  consequence.  It  seems  a 
great  pity  that  we  cannot  say  there  is 
always  trouble  in  consequence.  The 
trouble,  however,  does  not  always  follow 
the  use  of  self-will  in  this  world  —  al- 
though it  seems  as  if  there  could  be  no 
doubt,  according  to  order,  about  its 
making  up  for  lost  time  in  the  next. 
Surely  a  man  must  be  guided  into  whole- 
some obedience  to  law  somewhere  in 
eternity. 

By  the  use  of  his  self-will,  a  man  is 
working  to  get  his  own  way,  whether  or 
no.  His  own  way  may  appear  to  be  a 
very  good  way,  —  it  may  be  a  way  that 
is  really  at  the  time  useful  to  other 
people,  —  but  he  profanes  the  law  of 
service  by  using  it,  without  reverence  or 
respect,  only  for  his  own  ends.  Scientists 
are  forced  to  be  guided  by  scientific  law, 
but  many  of  them  have  no  reverence  for 

5 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

the  fact.  I  have  sometimes  thought  that 
some  scientists  believed  that  they  made 
the  laws  they  are  compelled  to  obey. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  man  using  his  un- 
selfish will,  unperverted  by  wanting  his 
own  way,  moves  steadily  and  unswerv- 
ingly in  accordance  to  law.  Whether  it 
is  civil  law,  scientific  law,  moral  law,  or 
spiritual  law  that  guides  him,  he  allows 
himself  to  be  guided,  and  he  gets  there. 
For  the  greatest,  indeed  the  only  real 
power  in  the  world  must  come  through 
implicit  obedience  to  law. 

This  necessary  obedience  to  law  is  a 
strong  factor  in  the  healthy  use  of  nerves. 
Much  has  been  said  during  this  war  of 
the  necessity  for  saving  food,  money, 
and  indeed  all  material  things,  but  little 
or  nothing  has  been  said  with  regard 
to  the  saving  of  human  energy  —  and 
yet  the  saving  of  human  energy  might 
be  at  the  root  of  the  power  that  wins 
6 


THE  LAW 

the  war.  It  is  the  most  profitable  sav- 
ing that  there  can  be  in  the  world,  and 
all  economies  are  more  perfectly  carried 
out  when  the  saving  of  human  energy 
comes  first  and  all  other  savings  are  its 
derivatives. 

The  first  economy  of  human  force 
comes  from  knowing  and  practicing  the 
habit  of  resting  entirely  when  one  rests, 
whether  it  is  a  rest  of  five  minutes  or 
the  rest  for  an  entire  night.  This  habit 
of  economy  means  life  and  strength  to 
a  soldier.  To  this  it  may  be  answered : 
"A  soldier  fights  in  such  a  spirit  of  ten- 
sion that  if  he  were  to  let  down  com- 
pletely when  he  had  five  minutes  to 
rest  in  safety,  he  would  go  to  pieces 
with  a  snap,  and  could  not  recover  him- 
self when  a  quick  call  came  for  action." 

The  reply  to  that  statement  is  that 
any  soldier  fighting  in  such  a  spirit  of 
tension,  when  his  five  minutes'  rest  came, 

7 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

could  not  let  himself  down  if  he  tried.  A 
man  must  have  the  normal  habit  of  true 
economy  of  force  back  of  him  to  be  able 
to  let  down  and  rest  in  five  minutes  and 
then  recover  himself  at  once  for  quick 
and  decisive  action. 

Kipling  gave  this  peculiar  power  of  rest- 
ing to  his  pony  in  the  polo  game,  "The 
Maltese  Cat."  The  "Maltese  Cat"  says 
when  he  comes  off  the  field,  "'Now  leave 
me  alone.  I  must  get  all  the  rest  I  can 
before  the  last  quarter. ' 

"He  hung  down  his  head  and  let  all 
his  muscles  go  slack,  Shikast,  Bamboo, 
and  Who's  Who  copying  his  example. 

"Better  not  watch  the  game,'  he  said. 
'We  aren't  playing,  and  we  shall  only 
take  it  out  of  ourselves  if  we  grow  anx- 
ious. Look  at  the  ground  and  pretend 
it's  fly -time.' 

'They  did  their  best,  but  it  was  hard 
advice  to  follow." 

8 


THE  LAW 

Any  intelligent  soldier  reading  the 
above  little  bit  from  the  story  of  the 
"Maltese  Cat"  could  get  from  it  in- 
valuable help  in  the  performance  of  his 
work;  and  the  Maltese  Cat,  if  I  re- 
member rightly,  won  the  game. 

If  we  can  rest  when  the  time  comes 
for  resting,  even  in  war,  we  have  then  a 
true  background  from  which  to  learn 
economy  of  effort  in  everything  we  do  — 
from  cleaning  the  captain's  puttees  to  a 
charge  with  the  bayonet. 

To  rest  truly,  we  must  learn  to  give 
up  when  the  time  comes  to  give  up. 
Drop  the  pictures  out  of  our  minds. 
Drop  the  anxieties  as  to  what  to  do 
next.  Drop  our  muscles  so  that  our 
bodies  are  literally  given  up  to  gravity 
in  every  muscle.  We  need  not  be 
afraid ;  everything  we  want  to  use  will 
be  there,  and  be  there  ready  for  use 
when  our  rest  is  over  and  the  time  comes 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

for  action.  Most  men  suffer  unneces- 
sarily because  they  do  not  trust  in  the 
laws  of  nature.  There  always  seems  to 
be  a  sort  of  latent  fear  that  the  laws  will 
go  back  on  them,  which  is  an  impossi- 
bility. Indeed,  men,  —  because  they 
have  no  faith,  —  too  often  go  back  on 
the  laws.  So  much  for  the  economy  of 
relaxation. 

The  second  economy,  as  I  said  before, 
is  in  using  only  the  force  and  the  part 
of  one's  body  that  is  needed  to  do  what- 
ever is  before  one  to  do  —  the  economy 
of  concentration.  That  is  to  learn  to 
do  all  one's  work  without  strain.  The 
forming  of  that  habit  must  be  begun  out 
of  hours.  But  one  man  who  has  gained 
it  can  help  many  another  during  action 
by  a  quick  and  kind  suggestion  as  op- 
portunity offers. 

It  would  be  an  easy  objection,  and 
one  that  might  sound  reasonable,  to  say : 
10 


THE  LAW 

"How  can  I  waste  my  time  thinking 
to  do  a  thing  with  the  least  amount  of 
force?  The  enemy  would  get  the  better 
of  me  at  once  while  I  was  aiming  to 
economize  in  getting  the  better  of  him. 
I  must  be  alert,  keen,  quick,  sharp,  — 
everything  I  do  must  go  with  a  'click." 

It  does  seem  absurd  on  first  thought 
to  say  that  one  can  "click"  with  econ- 
omy of  force,  but  on  second  thought 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  greater  the 
economy  of  energy,  the  better  concen- 
trated is  the  "click."  True  concentra- 
tion is  dropping  everything  that  inter- 
feres. 

One  must  not  stop  to  consider  the 
true  economy  in  the  "click",  but  by 
considering,  in  leisure  times,  the  true 
economy  in  all  action,  the  brain  gets 
turned  into  that  direction,  and  as  econ- 
omy of  force  becomes  habitual  in  much 
that  can  be  done  at  leisure,  the  habit 
ii 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

gradually  spreads  itself  to  the  things 
that  must  be  done  with  immediate 
promptness. 

This  economy  of  concentration  is  a 
principle  —  a  working  law  in  nature. 
Adam,  —  if  there  ever  was  a  personal 
Adam,  —  anyway,  Adam,  as  being 
typical  of  a  perfectly  natural  man, 
would  have  obeyed  it  to  perfection, 
before  he  left  Paradise,  for  when  he  left 
he  had  to  learn  laboriously  all  that 
before  then  he  would  have  done  as  a 
matter  of  course.  So  must  any  other 
man,  by  the  use  of  his  own  free 
will,  work  his  way  into  the  current  of 
perfect  law  until  he  consciously  forms 
habits  which  enable  him  to  be  carried 
by  such  law,  and  so  to  be  steadily  en- 
lightened and  guided. 

Let  me  repeat  what  I  have  trieii  to 
make  clear  in  this  chapter : 

There  is  a  law  of  human  economy 
12 


THE  LAW 

which  dictates  that  a  man  can  increase 
his  mental  and  physical  efficiency  if  he 
will  rest  while  off  duty  and  concentrate, 
to  the  elimination  of  everything  except 
the  particular  duty  at  hand,  at  other 
times.  Absolute  obedience  to  this  law 
is  essential  if  a  man  would  reap  its 
benefits.  True  will  power  makes  for 
obedience,  selfish  will  power  defeats  it. 
If  a  man  wills  that  he  drop  his  thoughts 
of  himself,  —  self-pity,  self -appreciation, 
self-aggrandizement,  and  all  the  rest  of 
the  brood,  —  he  will  find  it  easy  to  con- 
serve while  at  rest  and  concentrate  while 
at  work ;  he  will  find  himself  a  small 
working  unit  in  the  mass  of  human  econ- 
omy; he  will  find  that  he  has  attained 
the  only  "selfish"  thing  worth  having 
—  self-control. 

In    our    blind    foolishness,    we    grope 
around  in  darkness  when  we  might  so 
easily  slip  into  the  light.     We  aim  labori- 
13 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

ously  to  make  a  fire  with  steel  and  flint 
when  the  whole  blessed  sun  is  at  our 
disposal ;  at  our  disposal  it  is,  provided 
we  obey  its  laws.  The  trouble  is  that 
man  does  not  like  to  obey.  He  wants 
to  use  his  will  and  his  human  machine 
according  to  his  own  ideas,  and  not  at 
all  according  to  God's  laws.  Man's  own 
ideas,  regardless  of  law,  are  always  even- 
tually destructive,  however  good  they 
may  appear  to  be  temporarily;  but 
God's  laws,  when  truly  obeyed,  are,  — 
without  fail,  —  always  constructive. 

There  is  no  law  of  mechanics  that 
is  not  exemplified  in  the  working  of  the 
human  machine.  The  balance  of  a  lever 
is  a  beautiful  thing,  and  one  can  easily 
see  the  absurdity  of  adjusting  a  lever 
so  that  it  would  be  able  to  raise  a 
weight  and  then  putting  on  additional 
and  unnecessary  force.  To  use  un- 
necessary force  so  as  to  produce  waste 

14 


THE  LAW 

of  energy  is  not  mechanically  desirable, 
but  to  use  the  laws  of  nature  to  econo- 
mize force  is  that  for  which  a  true 
mechanic  is  always  aiming. 

A  little  thoughtful,  intelligent  use  of 
the  mind  in  studying  true  economy  in 
nerve  force,  and  a  little  will  power 
exerted  in  its  practice,  will  bring  us  into 
the  normal  working  of  the  laws  of  human 
action,  so  that  before  we  know  it  we 
shall  feel  as  if  our  nerve  machine  had 
been  oiled.  And  our  steady  unfailing 
reward  will  be  greater  efficiency  in 
doing  the  work  which  has  been  set 
before  us. 

Man  is  the  only  animal  who  can  get 
up  and  look  down  on  himself  and  see 
what  he  is  doing,  how  he  is  doing  it, 
and  why  he  is  doing  it.  Man  is  the 
only  animal  who  can  get  a  perspective 
within  himself.  If  we  took  advantage, 
an  honest  advantage  of  that  privilege, 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

it  would  bring  us  freedom,  delicacy  of 
perception,  and  power  —  for  a  man's 
very  identity  is  his  power  of  distin- 
guishing and  his  power  of  choosing. 

The  measure  of  his  use  of  that  power 
of  choosing  is  his  measure  as  a  man. 


16 


CHAPTER  2 
"Conquer  Beginnings" 

THERE  is  really  nothing  new  in 
the  chapters  which  follow.  I 
have  already  stated  the  case, 
and  in  a  way,  nothing  more  can  be  said. 
But  consider,  for  a  moment,  the  multi- 
plicity of  man's  experiences  in  this  war. 
How  one  man  is  a  messboy  on  a  de- 
stroyer hunting  submarines ;  how  an- 
other is  an  ambulance  driver ;  how  a 
third  is  a  great  general  outlining  cam- 
paigns which  involve  thousands  of  his 
fellows ;  how  a  fourth  sits  at  a  desk  cod- 
ing dispatches  and  keeping  lines  of  com- 
munication open ;  how  hundreds  and 
thousands  of  others  sit  on  a  firing  step 
up  to  their  knees  in  slush,  and  wait ;  how 
17 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

thousands  and  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  others  are  obeying  their  superiors, 
doing  their  several  duties  in  ways  too 
manifold  to  chronicle  or  even  contem- 
plate. Or  again,  consider  the  simple 
yet  vast  difference  between  being  a 
private  and  being  an  officer;  consider 
the  difference  between  mental  agony, 
which  some  men  are  asked  to  suffer, 
and  the  physical  agony  which  is  the  lot 
of  others ;  consider  the  fact  that  some 
men  are  born  clean  while  others  have  to 
keep  so ;  that  some  are  dull  and  others 
sensitive ;  that  many  men  never  dreamed 
that  they  would  be  called  upon  to  do 
this  mammoth  job  of  house-cleaning 
upon  which  each  and  every  one,  from 
generalissimo  to  striker,  is  somehow  en- 
gaged. Consider  all  this,  and  you  will 
see  that,  although  I  have  already  stated 
the  case,  it  may  be  useful  to  look  at  the 
law  and  its  workings  from  different 
18 


"CONQUER  BEGINNINGS" 

sides  —  from  the  different  sides  of  the 
experiences  of  different  men.  For  from 
each  we  may  derive  a  precept,  a  kernel 
of  truth,  which  although  particular  to 
the  experience  of  only  a  few  men,  may 
still  be  used  as  a  help  in  obeying  the 
central  law  by  all  others. 

My  first  lift  on  the  road  toward  the 
saving  of  human  energy  is  —  Conquer 
beginnings.  Conquer  beginnings  can  be 
thought  of  in  two  ways :  in  the  line  of 
construction,  in  the  line  of  destruction. 
Both  are  equally  important,  equally 
strengthening  and  effective,  whatever 
path  we  may  be  taking,  or  wishing  to 
take  in  the  line  of  useful  work,  whether 
military  or  civil. 

Let  us  begin  with  the  first  —  the 
beginnings  in  constructive  work.  I  re- 
member hearing  a  little  girl  who  was 
about  to  begin  the  study  of  Latin  lec- 
tured kindly  by  a  wise  and  fatherly 

19 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

man.  The  main  thing  that  impressed 
me,  and  it  took  a  deep  hold,  was  his 
saying  in  response  to  the  child's  ex- 
pressed fear  of  the  hard  work  and  as  to 
whether  she  was  equal  to  it :  "My  dear, 
Latin  will  be  easy  —  easy  —  if  you  begin 
by  getting  the  first  lesson  perfectly,  so 
that  you  know  it  as  well  as  you  know 
your  own  name.  Then  do  the  same  with 
the  second  lesson ;  remember  to  know  it 
as  well  as  you  know  your  own  name, 
and  you  know  that  no  teacher,  however 
formidable  he  may  be,  can  trip  you  up 
in  asking  you  to  give  your  name.  Go 
right  on  with  the  same  perfection  of 
knowledge  in  the  third  lesson,  and  if  you 
do  not  waver  or  slacken  in  succeeding 
lessons,  you  form  the  habit  of  getting 
each  lesson  perfectly.  When  starting  to 
study,  you  feel  uncomfortable  until  you 
have  learned  it  perfectly,  and  thus  you 
find  Latin  not  only  easy,  but  a  joy." 

20 


"CONQUER  BEGINNINGS" 

I  well  remember  the  rapt  attention 
that  the  child  gave,  and  her  sigh  of  relief. 
Her  quick  perceptions  seemed  to  drink 
in  and  absorb  every  word  her  kind  friend 
said.  I  think  there  was  at  the  time  a 
slight  question  in  her  mind  with  regard 
to  the  "joy",  but  I  have  no  doubt  that 
she  learned  later  that  every  active  use 
of  the  mind  for  a  good  purpose,  even 
if  not  at  first  personally  interesting, 
grows  to  be  a  joy  if  we  put  our  whole 
hearts  into  learning  the  first  lesson  per- 
fectly, as  well  as  we  know  our  own  names ; 
if  we  insist  upon  that,  and  follow  in 
the  same  spirit  with  every  succeeding 
lesson,  the  very  exercise  of  the  brain  in 
such  a  case  is  refreshing.  The  work, 
if  we  do  not  overdo  it,  starts  the  circu- 
lation and  clears  out  the  dead  tissue  in 
the  brain,  making  room  for  the  building 
up  of  new  tissue,  and  the  consequent 
renewal  of  life  there. 
21 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

There  are  big  things  and  little  things 
where  it  is  clear,  —  indeed,  it  can  be- 
come clear  in  everything,  —  that  to  con- 
quer in  the  very  first  is  more  sure  to 
lead  to  success,  and  a  well-founded  suc- 
cess, later  on.  This  great  war  had  cer- 
tainly one  of  its  beginnings  fifty  years 
ago,  when,  after  the  Prussian  success 
in  France,  Germany  began  to  prepare 
for  "the  conquest  of  the  world."  There, 
in  that  time  years  ago,  if  England  had 
seen  that  Germany  was  making  her 
beginning,  and  England  had  at  once 
"begun",  the  war  would  probably  have 
been  over  by  now,  or  the  forces  that  made 
the  war  might  possibly  have  fought  it 
out  without  bloodshed,  and  Germany  to- 
day would  be  a  happy  republic.  If  not, 
England  would  have  had  a  trained  army 
equal  to  Germany's,  and  a  freedom  which 
would  have  made  it  comparatively  easy  to 
help  France  and  even  to  have  invaded 

22 


"CONQUER  BEGINNINGS" 

Germany.  But  England  did  not  conquer 
in  the  beginning.  She  did  not  even 
begin  when  Lord  Roberts  told  her  to. 
She  had  to  make  her  beginning  with 
Kitchener's  army,  and  of  course  her 
conquest  comes  later,  in  consequence. 
Thank  God  she  has  made  her  beginning 
now. 

Did  not  we  United  States  do  the  same 
thing  ?  Our  beginning  should  have  been 
made  with  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania, 
or  before,  and  long  before  that  some 
intelligent  person  should  have  realized 
the  amount  of  work  required  to  har- 
monize the  various  elements  of  this 
country  into  a  strong,  healthy  focus,  and 
we  should  have  begun. 

But  again,  suppose  we  had  a  "Lord 
Roberts",  as  I  believe  we  had;  most 
of  our  people  were  too  busy  working,  too 
busy  serving  their  Absolute  Monarchy, 
to  listen.  The  only  way  was  to  have  been 
23 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

driven  to  it.  The  result  was  naturally 
a  sad  and  unhappy  botch  of  a  beginning, 
but  we  have  learned  at  least  part  of  our 
lesson  and  are  now  truly  beginning  to 
begin,  and  not  too  late  to  help  England 
and  France  to  do  their  work  thoroughly. 
To  conquer  beginnings  in  all  construc- 
tive work  means  to  conquer  at  begin- 
nings, of  course.  It  is  as  necessary  with 
each  individual  as  it  is  with  a  nation. 
Nations  are  made  up  of  individuals, 
and  if  each  individual  in  the  nation  is 
making  a  point  of  getting  his  own  first 
lesson  perfectly,  what  a  wonder  of  power 
and  use  a  nation  could  be !  An  army 
is  made  of  individual  men  ;  if  each  officer 
and  private  would  work  on  the  principle 
of  conquering  beginnings,  of  making  so 
strong  and  true  a  start  in  his  work  that 
he  gets  into  the  current  of  it  at  the  first 
step,  and  getting  fairly  into  the  cur- 
rent, keeps  a  steady  eye  to  stay  there, 
24 


"CONQUER  BEGINNINGS" 

the  effect  upon  the  army  might  appear 
to  be  a  miracle  ! 

In  all  action,  the  real  start  is  in  the 
mind.  One  must  always  get  mentally 
prepared  for  action.  A  great  general 
does  all  his  work  in  his  head.  Minor 
officers  should  of  course  follow  his  ex- 
ample in  mental  preparation.  Listen  to 
what  is  said,  and  then  do  it  is  the  motto 
for  every  private. 

In  learning  to  drill  —  to  obey  promptly 
—  to  fire  a  gun  —  to  use  a  bayonet  — 
do  not  fail  to  respect  the  necessity  of 
work  in  your  mind  at  the  beginning  — 
and  at  each  new  beginning  in  the  prog- 
ress of  training. 

I  knew  a  remarkable  athlete  and 
watched  him  in  acrobatic  work  that  re- 
quired skill  and  precision  of  movement. 
"How  did  you  do  it?"  I  asked  in  sur- 
prise and  wonder.  "Well,"  he  answered, 
"I  did  most  of  it  lying  still  in  bed !" 

25 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

It  seems  as  if  certain  forces  from  within 
came  to  a  man's  aid  when  he  gets  well 
aimed  in  the  beginning.  Certainly  to 
continue  successfully  is  always  easier  if 
one  has  a  firm  foundation  at  the  start. 
It  helps  also  to  see  that  often  success 
comes  because  through  what  we  have 
learned  by  failure  we  can  better  start 
again  and  make  a  true  beginning.  One 
sometimes  fails,  it  seems,  only  to  enable 
himself  to  learn  how  to  begin  rightly. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  say  here 
that  conquering  in  the  beginning  of  all 
constructive  work  can  better  lead  to  con- 
tinued success  if  we  are  intelligent  about 
not  keeping  at  any  work  too  long,  about 
giving  our  brains  rest  when  the  right 
time  comes,  and  respecting  intelligently 
the  restful  and  wholesome  influence  of 
a  change  of  work.  This  may  come, 
does  come,  often  with  a  soldier  at  times 
when  his  brain  is  tired,  even  fagged, 
26 


"CONQUER  BEGINNINGS" 

and  rest  or  change  of  attention  are  out 
of  the  question  because  of  interfering 
with  duty  -  -  where  such  interference  is 
impossible.  In  such  cases  the  tendency 
of  the  men  is  to  resist,  and  the  natural 
tendency  of  the  nerves  and  muscles, 
quite  distinctly  from  the  man,  is  to 
resist.  Thus  the  will  of  the  man  has  to 
do  double  work.  The  man  must  posi- 
tively drop  his  own  tendency  to  resist, 
and  he  must  take  his  muscles  and  his 
nerves  in  hand,  as  he  would  guide  a 
refractory  horse  —  quiet  them  down  and 
insist  upon  dropping  their  resistances. 
This  a  man  can  do  on  the  march.  He 
can  do  it  in  many  forms  of  active  serv- 
ice. He  can  do  it  better  if  his  mind 
has  worked  habitually  and  with  intelli- 
gence in  that  way  before ;  and  sometimes 
this  power,  which  is  really  innate,  will 
jump  out  of  a  man's  subconsciousness 
and  he  will  find  himself  working  to  save 
27 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

his  force  and  succeeding,  while  at  the 
same  time  wondering  where  in  the  world 
his  new-found  knowledge  and  power  came 
from.  When  one  discovers  that  nerves 
are  strengthened  by  yielding  to  laws  that 
are  bigger  than  we  are,  not  only  they, 
but  our  power  for  well-concentrated  ac- 
tivity, grow  in  consequence ;  it  is  as  if 
one  had  discovered  a  gold  mine,  —  more 
than  that,  —  and  better,  much  better. 

We  conquer  beginnings  in  all  con- 
structive work  in  order  to  proceed  better 
in  active  construction,  whether  it  be 
work  of  the  mind  or  the  body  or  both. 
We  conquer  beginnings  in  what  attacks 
us  as  destructive  in  order  to  get  out  of 
our  systems  all  interferences  to  good 
work. 

Jealousy  of  the  other  man  attacks  us 

and   is   destructive  —  most   horribly   so, 

if    it    is   permitted   to    take    its    course. 

Resistance    to    the    fact    of    things    not 

28 


"CONQUER  BEGINNINGS" 

going  our  way  is  destructive.  Resist- 
ance to  other  people's  faults  and  pecu- 
liarities is  an  attack  which  eats  the  life 
out  of  us  if  we  let  it  get  its  teeth  in. 
Resentment  to  those  whom  we  think 
have  injured  us  is  so  destructive  in  its 
effect  that  it  might,  without  rightly 
offending  any  one's  taste,  be  called  rot- 
ting. Every  man  can  really  know  his 
own  destructive  tendencies  better  than 
any  one  else,  if  he  looks  for  them  and 
wants  to  find  himself  out.  Unhealthy 
excitement  of  all  kinds  is  destructive. 
Homesickness,  if  we  let  it  possess  us, 
destroys  our  best  powers.  Being  "sick 
of  the  whole  thing"  is  fairly  murderous 
to  every  one's  best  possible  work.  The 
loathsomeness  of  sights  which  soldiers 
in  active  service  must  have  before  their 
eyes,  —  strange  to  say,  —  is  destructive 
of  real  human  sympathy,  if  we  let  it 
get  into  us. 

29 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

Every  one  of  these  temptations  can  be 
conquered  in  the  beginning,  and  if  a  man 
learns  how  to  yield  and  thus  to  drop  the 
strain  of  muscle,  nerve  and  brain  that  the 
ugly  things  cause,  to  yield  in  the  beginning 
as  soon  as  the  trouble  appears,  to  turn 
away  from  the  temptation  and  to  his 
best  sense  of  the  opposite  good,  he  will 
not  only  free  himself  from  the  ravages 
of  the  temptation,  but  he  will  get  a 
whiff  of  fresh  air  in  his  soul  that  will 
add  to  his  power  of  conquering  the 
next  time  his  weak  tendency  appears. 
The  same  tendency  must  be  conquered 
over  and  over  before  it  can  be  put  out 
of  the  way  altogether.  And  if  conquered 
over  and  over  in  its  beginnings.,  it  has 
no  weakening  power  whatever,  and  the 
attention  and  work  given  to  conquering 
brings  steadily  increasing  strength. 

When  we  open  our  minds  to  better 
things,  if  we  have  a  true  dramatic  sense, 
30 


"CONQUER  BEGINNINGS" 

it  rushes  to  our  rescue.  We  see  what  the 
result  would  have  been  if  we  had  let  the. 
selfishness  have  its  way  and  go  on  to  its 
full  conclusion.  We  see  the  contrast  of 
letting  an  evil  have  its  own  way  with  us, 
compared  to  the  freedom  which  comes 
from  conquering  beginnings.  Indeed, 
the  habit  of  conquering  beginnings  clears 
one's  human  perceptions  altogether,  and 
enables  a  man  to  put  himself  profitably 
in  another  man's  place  —  profitably  to 
the  other  man  and  equally  so  to  himself. 

As  we  drop  the  worst  of  ourselves,  our 
bad  tendencies,  and  positively  refuse  to 
act  or  to  speak  or  to  think  from  them, 
we  find  the  good  tendencies  right  there 
quickly  ready  to  supply  their  places. 

If  one  does  not  conquer  beginnings  of 
all  temptations,  the  evil,  selfish  tenden- 
cies will  work  themselves  into  the  system 
sometimes  with  coarse  and  evident  force, 
but  often  so  subtly  that  they  are  not 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

perceived  until  a  man  finds  himself  in 
bondage  to  them,  a  bondage  which  often 
becomes  torture;  and  even  though  the 
man  is  tortured,  he  has  not  will  enough 
to  free  himself,  because  in  the  beginning 
he  did  not  use  his  will  to  conquer. 

A  man  can  think  this  whole  subject 
out  for  himself,  and  obey  or  disobey  to 
no  end.  But  to  all  it  must  be  plain  to 
see  the  possible  power  to  develop  from 
starting  right  to  begin  with,  in  all  con- 
structive action,  and  the  impossibility  of 
working  constructively  unless  we  nip  the 
destructive  tendencies  in  the  bud.  Turn 
away  from  them  at  first  sight.  Conquer 
beginnings. 


CHAPTER  3 


NO  one  who  thinks  can  doubt  the 
very  great  and  radical  use  that 
the  war  may  be  to  these  United 
States.     We  have  been,  as  a  great  states- 
man rightly  said,  too  much  like  a  poly- 
glot   boarding-house.     We    need    to    be 
amalgamated    and    harmonized,    and    in 
our   present    state   of   civilization    what 
else  could  possibly  do  it  but  a  great  war 
for  a  great  cause? 

The  men  in  this  country  have  been  so 
engaged  in  asserting  their  own  "freedom" 
that  they  have  neglected  more  and  more 
conspicuously  to  respect  the  freedom  of 
other  men.  The  result  has  been  bond- 
age —  bondage  on  all  sides.  Bondage 

33 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

masquerading  as  freedom.  Really 
slavery  in  the  broadest  sense  of  the 
word. 

A  noted  Englishman  who  came  as  an 
emissary  to  help  us  to  do  our  best  in  the 
war  said  he  came  expecting  to  find  a 
great  democracy,  and  found  instead  an 
absolute  monarchy  of  the  most  extreme 
kind,  and  the  monarch,  he  said,  was 
SELF,  —  selfish  interest,  —  on  all  sides 
selfish  interest.  That  man  showed  a 
clean  perception  and  a  keen  and  quick 
recognition  of  human  frailty.  He  spoke 
the  truth,  and  no  one  who  truly  loves  his 
country  could  help  thanking  him  for  it, 
as  indeed  he  spoke  from  a  desire  to  serve 
the  country,  and  not  at  all  to  condemn 
it.  He  saw  that  we  were  not  a  free 
nation,  but  a  nation  in  bondage,  in 
bondage  to  self,  and  he  respected  our 
national  intelligence  enough  to  feel  it 
worth  while  to  tell  us,  believing  that  we 
34 


"THE  OTHER  MAN" 

would  recognize  the  disease  and  discover 
and  apply  the  remedy. 

Of  course  the  remedy,  to  reach  the  whole 
nation,  must  be  heartily  used  by  each 
individual.  The  whole  body  is  healthy 
in  proportion  as  each  organ,  nerve  and 
muscle,  each  red  corpuscle  of  blood  and 
each  white  corpuscle,  --  indeed,  as  every 
atom  of  the  body,  —  does  its  own  work 
independently  of  every  other  atom,  and 
so  supplies  true  vitality  for  the  help  of 
every  other  atom.  The  moment  one 
part  of  the  body  gets  out  of  order,  the 
whole  body  feels  the  effects  ;  except,  I  be- 
lieve, there  are  certain  cutaneous  troubles 
that  are  disagreeable  in  themselves  but 
do  not  affect  the  general  health  at  all. 

Let  us  hope  that  this  country  will  at 
the  end  of  the  war  find  itself  to  be 
more  of  an  organic  whole ;  and  although 
there  will  always  probably  be  cutaneous 
troubles  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  if 

35 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

they  are  humors  thrown  completely  to 
the  surface,  they  can  be  managed  with 
comparative  ease. 

To  gain  individual  freedom,  men  must 
learn  to  respect  one  another  —  to  re- 
spect one  another  truly,  not  to  appear  to 
do  so  for  the  sake  of  gaining  their  own 
ends,  which  is  a  very  common  practice, 
and  entirely  destructive  of  all  true  human 
intercourse. 

A  perfect  community  is  one  where 
each  man  attends  to  his  own  business 
with  a  living  interest  in  making  that 
business  work,  not  for  his  own  profit 
alone,  but  equally  for  its  use  to  the 
community.  Those  two  aims  do  not 
in  the  very  least  interfere  with  one  an- 
other ;  they  aid  one  another.  They  can 
only  be  practiced  by  a  mind  that  dis- 
cards pettiness  as  an  interference  to  his 
best  work,  and  to  his  best  interests.  A 
man  working  heartily  in  response  to  such 
36 


"THE  OTHER  MAN" 

aims  not  only  intelligently  respects  the 
business  and  interests  of  other  men,  but 
is  ready  always  to  lend  his  aid  when  he 
can  do  so  without  intrusion  or  presump- 
tion. 

.  Now  this  is  one  place  where  the  war 
can  and  will  be  doing  good  work  —  one 
of  the  many  places.  Most  men  in  this 
country  need  to  learn  the  dignity  of 
obedience,  obedience  to  law  and  obe- 
dience to  other  men  because  they  stand 
for  law.  Most  Americans  have  had  a 
mistaken  idea  of  being  their  own  masters  ; 
therefore  they  have  been  in  bondage  to 
their  own  false  idea  of  dignity.  They 
have  thought  it  beneath  them  to  obey. 
The  "  I-am-as-good-as-you  "  attitude  that 
one  notices  at  once  on  coming  into  the 
United  States,  whether  it  is  in  a  waiter 
at  a  hotel  or  in  a  member  of  Congress, 
is  like  a  disease  that  steadily  debases  the 
country.  If  I  have  to  take  an  attitude 

37 


2>JI  I  rK"S£ 
_^  __  k_f:«B-J-i-JlO 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

of  I-am-as-good-as-you  toward  my  fellow 
men,  that  very  effort  of  mine  to  prove 
that  I  am  proves  that  I  am  not. 

To  obey  promptly,  from  one's  own 
free  will,  without  resistance  either  out- 
side or  inside,  is  one  of  the  most  digni- 
fied actions  of  man.  If  a  man  could 
measure  the  amount  of  nervous  energy 
lost  in  kicking  against  obedience,  it 
would  astonish  him.  It  is  as  unintelli- 
gent, as  foolish,  as  to  throw  coal  into 
the  ocean  when  every  bit  of  coal  is  needed 
for  fuel  on  the  land.  Put  your  whole 
heart  into  obeying  with  a  "click"  if 
you  ever  want  to  learn  to  command. 
If  we  resist  obedience  to  a  man,  where 
obedience  is  in  the  line  of  the  law,  we 
resist  obeying  law.  And  although  many 
men  try  to  do  it,  we  cannot  live  and 
act  with  real  success  without  respecting 
the  law  any  more  than  we  can  make 
electricity  work  for  us  without  respecting 
38 


"THE  OTHER  MAN" 

the  necessity  of  both  the  negative  and 
the  positive  currents. 

In  resisting  obedience  we  are  trying  to 
swim  up  an  impossible  stream.  In  obey- 
ing willingly,  the  stream  carries  us,  and 
we  can  work  with  true  economy  of  force. 
We  not  only  act  wisely,  but  we  save 
our  nerve  strength. 

Kipling's  Aurelian  McGoggian,  who 
"worked  brilliantly,  but  could  never 
accept  an  order  without  trying  to  better 
it",  used  up  his  nervous  force  by  his 
resistance,  until  he  was  frightened  into 
willing  obedience  by  an  almost  fatal 
collapse.  He  did  not  wish  to  obey  any 
one.  He  did  not  believe,  —  or  pretended 
that  he  did  not  believe,  -  -  there  was  a 
God  to  obey.  And  as  Mr.  Kipling 
aptly  puts  it,  "life,  in  India,  is  not  long 
enough  to  waste  in  proving  that  there 
is  no  one  in  particular  at  the  head  of 
affairs.  For  this  reason.  The  Deputy 

39 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

is  above  the  Assistant,  the  Commis- 
sioner above  the  Deputy,  the  Lieutenant- 
Governor  above  the  Commissioner,  and 
the  Viceroy  above  all  four,  under  the 
order  of  the  Secretary  of  State  who  is 
responsible  to  the  Empress.  If  the  Em- 
press be  not  responsible  to  her  Maker  — 
if  there  is  no  Maker  for  her  to  be  re- 
sponsible to  —  the  entire  system  of  our 
administration  must  be  wrong." 

We  could,  with  profit,  say  the  same  of 
America,  changing  only  the  titles  of  the 
offices,  and  of  course  we  can  see  that  if 
each  man  makes  himself  responsible  first 
to  his  Maker,  he  thus  receives  light  and 
strength  to  be  truly  responsible  to  the 
human  officer  above  him. 

Rightly  speaking,  the  salute  is  at  the 
root  of  all  military  training.  It  is  es- 
pecially at  the  root  of  all  respect  and 
obedience  to  office.  We  do  not  salute 
the  man,  we  salute  the  office.  We  salute 
40 


"THE  OTHER  MAN" 

what  the  man  stands  for.  Above  all, 
we  salute  the  State  through  the  officer. 
Any  man  who  loves  his  country  and 
understands  the  significance  of  the  salute, 
salutes  always  with  precision  and  dig- 
nity, and  enjoys  it.  A  slouchy  attitude 
dissipates  force;  an  unwilling  salute 
filled  with  antagonism  and  resistance 
wastes  force.  The  more  the  antagonism 
and  resistance  are  repressed,  and  the 
more  perfect  the  salute  is  in  form, 
covering  up  such  antagonism,  the  more 
force  is  wasted.  It  stands  to  reason 
that  if  a  man  is  very  much  strained 
inside  in  repressing  his  desire  to  punch 
another  man's  head  rather  than  to  offer 
him  a  respectful  salute,  and  is  strained 
in  concealing  the  strain  of  antago- 
nism, he  must  be  using  up  human  fuel 
at  a  tremendous  rate  —  and  very  fool- 
ishly. 

I  have  heard  it  said  that  there  are  men 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

in  the  South  who  will  be  disgraced 
themselves  rather  than  salute  a  negro 
officer.  Most  well-born  Southerners  are 
intrinsically  gentlemen ;  therefore,  it 
seems  as  though  it  would  be  a  simple 
matter  for  them  to  cast  off  their  race 
prejudices  sufficiently  to  see  that  a  man 
who  refuses  to  salute  another  whose 
office  demands  it,  because  he  is  a  negro, 
shows  himself  to  be  below  the  negro, 
for  he  disregards  the  office  in  disregard- 
ing the  man.  A  man  should  with  cour- 
tesy, precision,  and  grace  salute  a  bed- 
post, if  it  were  understood  that  the 
bedpost  should  stand  for  the  government 
of  his  country. 

Suppose  we  know  an  officer  to  be 
bad --unfit  for  his  duty.  Suppose  he 
is  filled  with  unmanly  characteristics  that 
go  against  us,  —  go  against  us  because 
they  are  bad,  —  and  for  no  other  reason. 
So  long  as  he  holds  his  office,  we  must 
42 


"THE  OTHER  MAN" 

salute  him  willingly,  even  heartily,  with 
the  same  respect  that  we  could  hold  for 
a  man  whom  we  thoroughly  admired,  be- 
cause it  is  the  office  we  respect,  and  not 
the  man.  When  we  can  respect  both 
man  and  office,  so  much  the  better.  And 
where  is  the  use  of  using  up  some  pounds 
of  our  own  force  in  allowing  antagonism 
to  a  man  to  possess  us  when  we  are 
saluting  his  office?  Is  there  any  use 
in  that  at  all  ?  And  here  is  a  bit  of 
psychology  which  grows  greatly  in  in- 
terest as  one  sees  it  work.  The  more  we 
respect  his  office,  and  treat  it  with  re- 
spect, the  more  in  contrast  will  the 
boorishness  or  incapacity  of  the  officer 
stand  out  in  the  light  —  the  sooner  he 
will  be  discovered  and  the  sooner  de- 
posed. Or  the  sooner  will  he  get  a 
sight  of  his  own  boorishness  and  inca- 
pacity, and  drop  it  as  he  would  a  dirty 
shirt. 

43 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

What  an  officer  is  as  a  man  is  none  of 
our  business.  It  is  our  business  to  re- 
spect his  office  and  to  respect  it  heartily. 
Drop  the  antagonism  and  salute  the 
officer,  and  watch  for  the  psychological 
law  to  work.  It  never  fails;  some- 
times it  is  a  long  time  working,  but  in 
the  end  it  never  fails. 

This  tendency  to  antagonism  and  re- 
sistance tells  especially  in  brother  officers 
living  together.  As  when  we  travel  with 
friends  or  acquaintances  we  often  find 
out  personal  peculiarities  that  we  had 
never  suspected  before,  which  are  in- 
tensely disagreeable ;  so  when  we  are 
closely  associated  with  other  men  in  a 
military  camp,  especially  when  there  is 
much  necessary  waiting  with  little  or 
nothing  to  do,  the  other  men's  peculiar 
quibbles  appear  and  chafe  us.  If  we 
allow  ourselves  to  resist  the  peculiari- 
ties, we  suffer  great  discomfort  and  only 

44 


"THE  OTHER  MAN" 

lose  nervous  strength,  every  bit  of  which 
we  need  for  our  work  as  soldiers  or  as 
other  active  helpers  in  the  war.  Even 
if  a  man  is  mean,  brutal,  or  cruel,  we 
gain  nothing  and  lose  much  force  by 
resisting  his  meanness,  cruelty,  or  brutal- 
ity, i 

What  shall  we  do,  then  ?  Yield  — 
cease  all  such  resistance.  We  will  find 
that  resistance  and  antagonism  to  an- 
other man  tightens  our  nerves  and 
muscles.  We  will  find  that  by  persis- 
tently relaxing  such  tension,  it  becomes 
impossible  to  hold  the  resistance,  and 
we  will  find  that  the  relief  of  having 
yielded  to  it  is  so  much  greater  than  we 
could  by  any  chance  have  imagined  that 
we  may  almost  wish  that  other  dis- 
agreeable men  may  come  in  our  horizon 
that  we  may  appreciate  more  the  com- 
fort of  freedom  from  resisting  or  resent- 
ing them.  It  is  a  little  like  the  darkey 

45 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

who,  when  his  master  found  him  whip- 
ping himself,  and  asked:  "Why  do 
you  do  that,  Sambo?"  answered,  "Oh, 
Massa,  'cause  it  feel  so  gude  when  yuh 
stops." 

There  is  this  advantage  also :  that  by 
constantly  dropping  resistance  to  other 
men,  our  brains  become  quiet  and  clear. 
We  grow  more  intelligent  with  regard  to 
the  characters  of  the  men  about  us,  and 
while  we  become  more  sensitive  to  their 
selfishness,  we  are  equally  open  to  dis- 
cover good  points  in  them  to  which  our 
antagonism  would  otherwise  have  blinded 
us  entirely. 

If  we  feel  antagonism  to  a  man,  that 
is  very  apt  to  rouse  ill  feeling  in  him, 
and  so  the  hellish  spirit  is  increased 
by  playing  back  and  forth  between  men. 
If  we  cease  to  hold  our  own  antagonism, 
the  other  man  is  saved  the  responsive 
ill  feeling,  and  our  effort  may  even,  nay, 
46 


"THE  OTHER  MAN" 

often  does,  become  the  means  of  start- 
ing other  men  in  the  habit  of  construc- 
tive good  will. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  through 
the  practice  of  non-resistance  we  grow 
dull,  or  that  it  makes  us  weak.  The 
truth  is  quite  the  contrary. 

Exciting  emotions  always  befog  a 
brain,  and,  beyond  that,  it  requires  more 
will  to  yield  positively  than  it  does  to 
act  positively.  Therefore,  if  we  have 
cultivated  and  strengthened  our  wills  by 
yielding,  we  have  just  so  much  more  for 
prompt  and  effective  duty  in  action. 

An  officer  who  uses  his  will  to  yield 
positively  in  order  to  free  himself  from 
the  resistance  and  strain  to  which 
the  peculiarities  of  his  privates  tempt 
him,  not  only  brings  himself  to  where 
his  training  is  more  immediate  and 
perfect  in  its  effect  upon  his  men,  but 
endears  himself  to  all  his  men  by  his 

47 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

vigorous  patience  and  the  clear  under- 
standing of  their  individual  difficulties 
which  such  patience  gives  him.  Every 
one  knows  that  in  battle  a  man  is  most 
truly  and  effectually  followed  who  wins 
the  admiration  and  affection  of  his  men. 
Once  more  with  regard  to  brother 
officers :  a  man  may  be  filled  with  a 
tendency  to  complain  and  may  feed  the 
complaints  of  his  fellow  officers,  or  he 
may  from  the  practice  of  yielding  drop 
all  his  resistance  to  what  is  going  wrong 
in  the  mess  or  elsewhere,  and  by  listen- 
ing to  the  complaints  of  the  other  men 
with  a  calmness  of  mind  and  not  an  un- 
sympathetic attitude,  find  it  possible  to 
keep  such  a  margin  within  himself  that 
the  antagonism  of  others  does  not  touch 
him ;  and  gradually  when  the  men  have 
all  had  enough  outlets  for  their  com- 
plaints, the  atmosphere  will  grow  quiet 
enough  for  some  one  to  suggest  a  remedy. 
48 


"THE  OTHER  MAN" 

If  the  brain  of  an  eloquent  lecturer 
can  carry  with  it  an  audience  of  a  thou- 
sand or  more,  so  that  all  brains  are 
working  as  one,  the  brain  of  a  man  who 
has  an  intelligent  control  of  his  own 
emotions  can  have  an  equally  quieting 
influence  on  a  dozen  or  more  of  excited, 
discontented  men.  The  best  working 
power  of  the  quiet  forces  has  not  yet 
really  been  discovered  in  this  world. 
When  it  has  been  more  fully  discovered 
and  used,  men  will  begin  to  appreciate 
what  real  power  is. 

The  Japanese  have  the  idea  a  little, 
but  too  much  toward  selfish  ends  rather 
than  universal  ends.  "  Moral  jiujitsu  is 
not  resisting  the  adversary,  but  giving 
way  to  his  pressure,  that  he  may  the 
better  trip  him  up  and  confound  him." 
This  is  better  read  "not  resisting  the 
adversary,  but  giving  way  to  his  pressure 
that  he  may  the  better  prove  the  best 
49 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

working  of  the  moral  law."  To  conquer, 
conquer  by  yielding  is  the  best  and 
truest  way  for  individual  work.  We  are 
really  yielding  to  law  and  not  to  our 
opponent,  and  such  individual  conquer- 
ing makes  the  best  possible  soldier  in  a 
war  of  force. 

The  Other  Man  is  the  most  important 
individual  in  the  world.  That  is  the 
basis  of  Christianity,  which  is  what  we 
are  fighting  for  in  this  war.  If  Every 
Man  will  learn  to  forget  himself  and 
remember  the  Other  Man,  we  shall  not 
have  to  fight  very  much  longer.  Re- 
member —  the  Other  Man. 


CHAPTER  4 

In  a  Hospital 

IN  a  hospital,  if  the  nurses  are  well 
trained,  truly  focussed  to  their  work, 
clear-headed,    sympathetic    and  yet 
without    false   sympathy,  —  if    the    pa- 
tients are  obedient  and  responsive,  —  of 
course  the  work  tends  steadily  and  en- 
tirely toward  health.     We  are  not  here 
unmindful  of  the  doctors ;   we  are  taking 
it  for  granted  that  they  are  all  right. 

Let  us  speak  first  of  the  patients; 
then  if  a  man  should  happen  to  read  this 
book  who  later  comes  into  a  hospital, 
enough  of  the  light  here  may  remain  with 
him  to  help  him  through  and  out  of  the 
hospital  in  quicker  time  than  would  be 
otherwise  possible,  and  perhaps  may  even 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

enable  him  to  be  of  use  to  the  man  in 
the  next  bed. 

One  who  is  ill  can  lie  quiet  and  endure 
his  suffering  without  a  word  of  com- 
plaint, but  at  the  same  time  he  can  be 
holding  himself  so  tensely  that  his  cir- 
culation is  interfered  with,  and  the  cura- 
tive power  of  nature  and  the  remedies 
given  to  him  are  constantly  interrupted. 
In  many,  many  cases  a  brave,  un- 
complaining man  does  endure  in  that 
way,  and  he  endures  thus  because  he 
knows  no  other  way.  No  one  has  taught 
him ;  it  has  never  been  suggested  to 
him.  His  grandfathers  and  grand- 
mothers endured  just  like  that  before, 
and  every  one  said  of  them  as  they  say 
of  the  grandson,  "How  beautiful !  What 
wonderful  endurance !  What  a  monu- 
ment of  patience!"  This  is  said  over 
and  over,  and  no  one  knows  that  while 
such  a  man  is  indeed  in  all  appearance  a 

52 


IN  A  HOSPITAL 

monument  of  patience,  he  is  at  the  same 
time  a  monstrosity  of  strain. 

This  "monument  of  patience"  is  wrong 
because  his  strain  delays  his  recovery 
more  than  if  he  cried  out  and  com- 
plained and  swore  at  his  nurses.  Either 
extreme  is  decidedly  undesirable,  but  the 
crying  out  at  least  gives  an  outlet  and 
starts  the  circulation  toward  a  healthy 
movement  in  the  beginning,  although  if 
carried  too  far,  it  can  lead  to  inflamma- 
tion. But  with  a  quiet  endurance  which 
accompanies  an  interested  insistence  of 
the  will  upon  dropping  strain,  we  bring 
all  the  good  and  wholesome  forces  that 
tend  toward  health  directly  to  our  aid. 
Let  me  give  a  simple  illustration.  A 
man  was  way  up  in  the  north  of  England 
visiting  for  the  first  time  a  friend  whose 
family  he  had  never  met  before.  His 
visit  was  to  be  for  only  a  few  days  be- 
cause his  passage  was  taken  on  a  steamer 

53 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

to  sail  for  home  in  a  week.  It  was  es- 
sential that  he  should  reach  home  at  the 
time  when  the  steamer  was  due,  and, 
although  this  last  may  seem  to  be  a 
minor  matter,  for  reasons  of  his  own 
which  to  him  seemed  very  important, 
the  man  was  desperately  homesick. 

All  at  once,  and  without  any  warning, 
this  man  was  taken  suddenly  with  a 
severe  form  of  grippe.  What  came  to 
him  first  was,  "I  am  in  a  stranger's 
house ;  what  right  have  I  to  be  ill  here  ?" 
That  caused  the  tightening  of  his  nerves, 
Number  1.  Then  came  rushing  on  him 
what  seemed  to  be  the  very  evident 
fact:  "Feeling  as  ill  as  I  do  now, 
how  can  I  possibly  expect  to  be  able 
to  reach  Liverpool  and  sail  for  home  in 
a  week?"  There  was  the  cause  Number 
2  of  tightening  of  the  nerves  ;  in  that  was 
the  knowledge  of  the  essential  need  of  his 
being  at  home,  and  the  extreme  horne- 

54 


IN  A  HOSPITAL 

sickness  which  was  a  sort  of  torture. 
The  cause  of  tightening  Number  2  seemed 
colossal  and  overwhelming.  Our  friend 
had  about  an  hour  of  that,  and  of  course 
his  fever  was  increasing  and  he  himself 
was  feeling  proportionately  ill,  when  it 
occurred  to  him  that  all  his  anxieties 
were  increasing  his  illness.  He  called 
himself  names  and  said  to  himself,  "Now 
look  here,  John ;  if  you  go  on  this  way, 
you  have  no  chance  at  all.  You  have 
heard  of  the  curative  power  of  yielding. 
Now  is  your  opportunity  to  prove  its 
truth,  and  your  only  possible  way  of 
being  able  to  sail."  Whereupon  he  put 
his  whole  will,  —  shall  I  say  all  the 
strength  of  his  character,  —  to  work  to 
make  himself  willing  not  to  sail.  "All 
right,  all  right,"  he  repeated  over  and 
over  to  himself,  "I  am  willing  to  stay 
here  in  bed  and  let  the  boat  go  without 
me.  All  right,  all  right;  if  things  go 

55 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

to  smash,  it  is  not  my  fault  if  I  am  tied 
down  here  and  cannot  move.  It  is  my 
fault  if  I  do  not  do  everything  in  my 
power  to  yield  in  muscle  and  nerve  so 
that  nature  can  make  full  use  of  the  one 
chance."  And  he  did  yield  in  muscle 
and  nerve  and  in  his  mind  and  in  his 
will.  He  worked  like  a  Trojan  to  do  so. 
The  result  was,  that  instead  of  the  fam- 
ily's feeling  oppressed  by  his  illness, 
they  were  cheered  and  enlightened  by 
his  way  of  taking  it;  not  by  anything 
he  said,  but  by  what  he  did,  or  didn't, 
do.  His  fever  went  down,  and  when 
the  day  came  for  him  to  take  the  train 
for  Liverpool,  he  was  ready  to  do  it, 
and  he  sailed  on  the  appointed  steamer. 
The  grippe  is  an  illness  which,  as  the 
Irishman  said,  keeps  you  ill  a  week,  and 
it  takes  six  weeks  to  get  over  it.  And 
this  man,  of  course,  had  his  share  of 
weakness  in  recovery,  but  it  was  a 

56 


IN  A  HOSPITAL 

smaller  share  than  if  he  had  not  put  his 
will  to  work  to  drop  the  strain,  and  much 
smaller  because  after  he  got  on  to  his 
feet  he  kept  at  work  in  the  same  healthy 
direction. 

You  can  do  what  you  have  to  do  more 
perfectly  if  you  cease  opposition  to  all 
possible  interferences  and  put  your  mind 
on  yielding  for  the  sake  of  reaching  your 
end  more  truly.  When  your  end  is  re- 
covery from  illness,  you  can  reach  it 
immeasurably  better  and  sooner  by  yield- 
ing to  free  yourself  from  all  interferences ; 
and  all  forms  of  willful  and  nervous  im- 
patience with  illness  interfere  with  its 
cure. 

The  illustration  I  have  given  above 
is  a  homely  one,  but  the  principle  is  the 
same  in  cases  much  more  serious.  Using 
the  will  to  relax  in  muscle  and  nerve -^—  to 
yield  and  thus  to  drop  the  strain  of  suffer- 
ing from  wounds  has  always  an  effect  of 
57 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

allaying  the  inflammation,  sometimes 
more  and  sometimes  less,  but  always 
to  some  extent.  Also  an  important  thing 
to  remember  is  that  what  comes  to  the 
memory  of  exciting  associations,  horrible 
scenes  we  have  been  in,  and  all  akin 
to  them,  is  the  cause  of  great  strain, 
and  brings  or  holds  the  fever.  We  must 
yield  and  yield,  and  let  such  pictures 
go  through  us  and  out  of  us.  It  can  be 
done,  and  it  is  good  to  say  to  ourselves 
we  must  do  it,  and  we  will,  and,  if  we 
persist,  before  long  we  will  find  things 
quiet,  pleasant,  and  strengthening  rising 
up  and  out  of  our  subconsciousness  to 
take  the  places  of  all  that  was  terrible. 
Later  we  can  even  look  at  the  terrible 
things  with  a  quiet  mind.  But  a  man 
must  know  how  to  yield ;  of  course  he 
must,  or  he  cannot  do  it  after  long 
habits  of  tension.  It  is  of  little  use  for  a 
nurse  to  say  "drop  it",  "forget  it",  un- 
58 


IN  A  HOSPITAL 

less  the  patient  cooperates.  You  cannot 
forget  a  thing  really  unless  you  have 
faced  it  first,  because  until  you  have 
understood  and  intelligently  denounced 
its  destructive  power,  it  has  a  certain 
hold  on  you.  The  patient  would  often 
be  glad  to  cooperate,  if  he  knew  how.  In 
the  matter  of  yielding,  we  have  nature 
on  our  side,  and  she,  if  one  can  express 
it  so,  is  only  too  glad  to  teach  us  as  we 
give  her  opportunity.  And  if  a  man  will 
listen  and  attend  to  the  fact  that  there 
is  such  help  for  him,  he  will  surely  get 
the  help. 

Sometimes  the  ability  to  yield  comes 
through  simply  dropping  an  arm  or 
letting  it  lie  heavily  by  you  until  it  is 
as  limp  and  as  free  from  resistance  as  a 
baby's  arm  when  the  baby  is  sound  asleep. 
From  the  sense  of  that  one  quiet,  un- 
resisting arm  there  comes  a  sense  of 
yielding  all  over  the  body  —  if  one  at- 

59 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

tends.  Sometimes  one  learns  to  relax 
strain  through  taking  long  breaths,  and 
sinking  heavily  as  the  breath  goes  out. 
Steady,  rhythmic  breathing  is  very  help- 
ful in  bearing  pain.  I  remember  seeing 
a  physician,  standing  by  the  bedside  of 
a  man  who  was  in  very  intense  pain, 
watch  the  man  with  curious  interest 
while  feeling  his  pulse.  Finally,  the 
doctor  exclaimed,  "Well,  you  certainly 
relax  all  right.  With  an  ordinary  man 
in  pain  like  that,  the  breathing  would 
be  about  sixty  to  a  minute,  whereas 
you  are  breathing  about  six  times  a 
minute."  'Yes,"  answered  the  patient, 
"I  am  doing  that  to  ease  my  pain  — 
also  to  enable  me  to  bear  it."  The 
man  said  it  simply  and  rather  as  a  matter 
of  course,  but  it  was  interesting  news 
to  the  doctor ;  he  had  not  been  in  the 
habit  of  seeing  people  meet  the  strain 
of  intense  pain  in  that  way,  although  he 
60 


IN  A  HOSPITAL 

of  course  at  once  accepted  intelligently 
his  patient's  explanation. 

The  more  steadily  you  breathe  rhyth- 
mically, with  a  constant  aim  at  using 
less  force,  the  more  the  deep  breathing 
will  enable  you  to  yield  and  the  more 
freedom  it  will  give  to  normal  circula- 
tion. During  the  time  when  the  surgeon 
is  dressing  the  wound  and  after  he  has 
left,  having  done  his  best  to  make  it 
comfortable,  the  patient  by  deep,  quiet 
breathing  and  by  trying  to  yield  can 
prevent  the  fever  that  is  apt  to  follow 
—  or  at  least  can  lessen  it.  An  intelli- 
gent and  obedient  cooperation  of  his 
patient  is  a  great  delight  to  a  busy 
doctor.  Even  the  quickening  power  of 
giving  and  receiving  in  such  sympathetic 
process  of  curing  and  being  cured  gives 
life  and  hope  to  the  patient  and  sends 
the  doctor  on  his  busy  rounds  with  a 
lighter  heart. 

61 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

You  see  that  in  the  process  of  yielding 
to  free  ourselves  from  pain  we  have  double 
work  to  do,  for  often  when  our  minds  and 
wills  are  turned  entirely  toward  yielding, 
our  muscles  and  nerves  seem  to  have 
personalities  of  their  own  and  to  refuse 
to  yield.  If  we  recognize  their  obstinacy, 
however,  and  persist,  we  are  sure  to 
conquer,  for,  after  all,  they  are  our  own 
muscles  and  our  own  nerves,  and  were 
made  to  obey  us,  and  they  will  obey  us 
if  we  guide  them  with  a  quiet  mind. 
Such  rebellious  muscles  and  nerves  must 
be  guided  always  without  emotion.  You 
cannot  insist  upon  their  obedience  with 
strain;  they  rightfully  cry  out,  "If  you 
want  us  to  obey,  do  it  yourself" 

Notice  that  by  yielding  it  is  meant  to 
submit  to  pain  instead  of  fighting  against 
it  and  thus  to  assist  the  healthy  working 
of  the  laws  of  nature.  Let  nature  do  her 
best  work ;  her  best  work  is  all  right. 
62 


Now  this  attention  of  the  will  to  yield- 
ing is  interesting,  even  when  the  pain  is 
severe.  It  acts  as  a  diversion  —  a  diver- 
sion which  is  healthy  and  which  grows 
more  interesting  as  we  find  it  succeed- 
ing, and  feel  the  relief  of  such  success. 
And  sometimes  when  we  have  yielded 
to  hard  forms  of  pain  and  made  our 
nerves  and  muscles  obey  and  relax,  we 
can  actually  feel  nature  say  "thank 
you"  as  she  finds  her  way  open  to  go 
ahead  and  do  her  wholesome  work. 

But  what  of  the  nurses  ?  Certainly  a 
nurse  working  without  strain  and  one 
working  with  strain  are  great  contrasts. 
And  the  nurse  who  can  learn  to  work 
without  strain  can  bring  with  her  at- 
mosphere very  radical  help  to  her 
patients.  The  happy  cooperation  men- 
tioned above  between  doctors  and  pa- 
tients means  even  more  in  the  case  of 
nurses,  for  a  nurse  is,  after  all,  the  entire 
63 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

time  with  her  patient,  whereas  a  doctor 
can  only  see  him  on  his  professional 
visits. 

Some  nurses  kill  themselves  with  false 
emotions  (real  to  them)  in  so-called  — 
sympathy.  Some  nurses  preserve  them- 
selves in  cold  storage  by  hardening  their 
hearts  into  no  sympathy  at  all.  The 
happy  medium  is,  of  course,  a  genuine 
and  unselfish  sympathy  which  makes  the 
nurse  keenly  sensitive  to  her  patient's 
needs,  —  whether  they  are  physical  or 
mental,  —  and  quick  to  supply  them 
where  such  supply  is  possible.  There 
are  nurses  who  weary  their  patients  with 
their  kindness.  One  can  always  see  be- 
hind such  kindness  a  desire  to  be  thanked, 
to  be  appreciated,  to  be  admired.  Such 
" kindness"  mars  a  nurse's  work  more 
and  more  —  and  sometimes  seems  to  be- 
fog her  mind  entirely.  A  nurse  needs 
above  all  things  to  be  impersonal,  and 
64 


IN  A  HOSPITAL 

a  truly  impersonal  attitude  in  her  work 
keeps  her  more  sensitively  alive  to  her 
patient's  needs.  She  is  not  full  of  care 
and  attention  to  one  man,  and  entirely 
forgetful  of  another,  and  she  can  accept 
gratitude  and  affection  from  those  whom 
she  served  so  happily  and  with  so  great 
a  freedom  from  personal  feeling  that  the 
effect  is  only  wholesome,  —  and  lastingly 
so  —  indeed  a  happy  life-giving  memory 
for  each. 

When  a  nurse  maintains  a  wholesome, 
gentle,  and  impersonal  attitude  toward 
the  patient;  when  the  patient  controls 
his  nerves  with  a  normal  and  disinterested 
study,  they  are  both  helping  the  doctor  to 
cure  his  subject,  and  all  three  are  working 
in  unison  toward  the  greatest  good  — 
that  of  freeing  the  bed  for  the  next  man. 
Thus  mutual  giving  and  receiving,  in 
a  hospital,  as  everywhere  else,  is  always 
in  the  highest  sense  constructive. 

65 


CHAPTER  5 

About  Suffering 

IT  seems  all  very  well  to  talk  of  suf- 
fering, quietly  in  a  comfortable  house 
with  your  three  meals  a  day  and  a 
good  bed  to  sleep  in,  but  how  is  it  in  the 
midst  of  other  suffering,  miles  away, 
suffering  sometimes  of  the  worst  kind  — 
and  indeed  of  all  kinds.  Although  the 
contrast  of  the  places  and  scenes  is 
immense,  still  suffering  is  suffering  every- 
where, and  one  can  suffer  more  at  times 
when  comparatively  alone  than  in  the 
midst  of  surroundings  and  circumstances 
where  every  one  is  suffering.  A  man 
can  suffer  more  alone  than  with  others 
about  him  in  pain,  because  the  very 
turning  out  of  the  mind  to  relieve  the 
66 


ABOUT  SUFFERING 

suffering  of  others  lightens  one's  own. 
Then,  also,  the  same  principles  work 
with  regard  to  the  true  meeting  and 
conquering  of  suffering,  and  with  regard 
to  its  actual  use,  whether  the  man  is 
alone  or  with  many  others. 

Mental  suffering,  on  the  whole,  is 
worse  than  physical,  and  there  is  apt  to 
be  a  strong  touch  of  the  mental,  in 
all  physical  suffering. 

In  war  there  is  both  mental  and  phys- 
ical suffering,  and  very  extreme  phases 
of  both. 

In  one  of  Kipling's  Jungle  Stories, 
he  tells  how  the  elephants  could  not  go 
into  the  battle,  but  could  only  carry  their 
burdens  just  so  far  toward  the  edge, 
because  the  elephants  "saw  pictures  in 
their  heads"  roused  by  the  sight  of  the 
battle,  which  made  them  restless  and 
unmanageable.  When  the  elephants 
began  to  "see  pictures"  and  had  to  be 
67 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

sent  back,  then  the  bullocks  were  made 
to  carry  the  load  the  remainder  of  the 
way,  for  they  did  not  see  pictures  in 
their  heads  and  would  even  stand  and 
graze  comfortably  in  the  midst  of  the 
most  fearful  scenes. 

Man  differs  from  animals  in  that  he 
can  get  up  and  look  down  on  himself. 
A  man's  identity  is  his  power  of  dis- 
tinguishing and  his  power  of  choosing. 
That  is  a  privilege  given  him  from  the 
Creator  which  makes  a  man  a  man. 
The  trouble  is  that  man  has  left  this 
wonderful  human  power  so  often  un- 
used, even  in  its  very  crude  forms, 
that  very  few  men  in  this  world  even 
know  the  great  privilege  of  its  finer  use 
nor  the  wonderful  human  perspective  that 
may  be  found  through  the  delicate  and 
decided  habit  of  distinguishing  and 
choosing  rightly,  with  the  humility  nec- 
essary to  the  use  of  all  our  best 
68 


ABOUT  SUFFERING 

powers.  How,  for  instance,  is  a  man 
who  lets  a  bad  temper  possess  him  go- 
ing to  rule  his  imagination?  How  is 
a  man  who  allows  all  forms  of  resent- 
ment or  selfish  resistance  to  stir  him  up 
or  tighten  him  up  going  even  to  see  the 
fine  possibilities  of  his  imagination?  Of 
course  it  is  impossible  for  a  man  even  to 
know  the  power  within  himself  when  he 
keeps  a  turmoil,  or  a  fog,  or  both,  all 
the  time  on  his  outskirts.  The  imagi- 
nation of  the  elephants  was  of  great  use 
to  them  and  their  masters  when  it  could 
be  used  in  wholesome  lines.  The  ele- 
phants can  be  wonderfully  trained  by 
means  of  their  imagination.  The  bul- 
locks, having  no  imagination  at  all,  could 
be  used  where  the  elephants  failed.  A 
man  can  be  a  bullock  or  an  elephant  in 
his  imagination  as  the  need  is.  That 
is  wherein  a  man  is  higher  than  the 
beasts.  It  is,  as  I  have  said  before, 
69 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

wherein   a   man   is  a  man  —  a  child   of 
God. 

When  a  man  comes  to  a  place  wherein 
to  refuse  to  "see  pictures  in  his  head" 
can  enable  him  to  be  more  useful,  he 
can  inhibit  the  pictures  firmly  and  in- 
telligently, and  they  will  obey  him  and 
disappear.  He  can  do  that  without  in 
the  very  least  hardening  himself  or  re- 
pressing the  "pictures"  to  the  point 
where  they  will  come  up  when  least  ex- 
pected —  if  he  is  refusing  to  see  the  pic- 
tures because  of  thereby  gaining  greater 
power  of  use.  And,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  man  can  feel  with  the  elephants  and 
can  let  his  imagination  have  full  sway, 
when,  if  his  spirit  is  wholesome  behind 
it,  his  imagination  will  be  of  the  greatest 
service  to  him  and  to  others.  And  the 
man's  free  spirit  can  sometimes  guide 
the  "pictures"  to  their  use  and  some- 
times be  guided  by  them. 
70 


ABOUT  SUFFERING 

Now,  with  regard  to  the  imagination 
and  suffering,  it  seems  to  me  that  at 
least  one  third  of  the  suffering  in  this 
world  is  unnecessary  and  comes  from 
men  and  women  letting  false  pictures 
get  into  their  heads  and  nursing  them 
there,  like  the  two  long-faced  pessi- 
mists in  Punch.  First  Pessimist :  "Well, 
it's  going  to  be  worse  in  February." 
Super-pessimist:  ;'Yes,  if  February  ever 
comes." 

The  Buddhists  tell  us  that  the  eyes 
cannot  see  until  they  are  incapable  of 
tears,  and  the  soul  cannot  feel  until  it  is 
incapable  of  human  emotions.  Yes,  all 
right,  that  may  be  so ;  one  occasionally 
gets  a  light  that  enables  one  to  see 
through  a  crack  the  possible  state  of 
clearness,  of  penetration  and  breadth,  of 
perspective, — and  even  the  great  possible 
human  use  of  such  a  state,  but  a  man  must 
come  through  suffering  to  get  there.  I 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

have  seen  people  who  felt  that  they  had 
reached  that  acme  of  calm,  when  to  me 
it  seemed  clear  that  they  had  only 
hardened  into  a  state  of  conceited,  in- 
human lack  of  sympathy.  They  were 
perpetually  licking  their  chops  in  the 
complacency  of  their  own  selfish  souls. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  we  must,  as 
indeed  we  must,  come  through  suffering 
and  victoriously  out  of  it  in  order  to 
gain  the  quiet  strength  which  comes 
from  an  unswerving  trust  in  God,  and 
broadens  and  sharpens  our  perceptions 
to  serve  our  fellow  men  —  if  we  are 
to  do  that,  we  must  learn  to  discard 
false  suffering,  and  to  have  none  of  it. 
Every  man  must  recognize  his  own  false 
suffering  and  discard  it.  It  is  not  fair 
for  one  to  judge  another.  Suffering  in 
another  may  appear  to  me  false  where 
it  is  really  very  genuine.  Another  may 
suffer  keenly  for  what  would  trouble 
72 


ABOUT  SUFFERING 

us  very  little.  To  protect  one's  self 
and  others  from  false  or  selfish  suffering 
is  a  great  privilege. 

It  is,  however,  now  only  of  genuine 
suffering  I  write.  That  is  something  to 
be  heartily  grateful  for,  if  we  let  it  do 
its  work.  Surely  it  is  meant  that  we 
should  be  taught  by  suffering  and  many 
of  us  are.  That  suffering  is  a  cleansing 
fire  has  to  be  heard  many  times  before 
we  can  actually  experience  the  fact  that 
it  is  true.  But  when  we  do  experience 
it,  we  are  not  only  grateful  for  the  cleans- 
ing, deeply  grateful,  but  when  further 
suffering  comes  we  can  meet  it  with 
finer  intelligence  and  sometimes  can  even 
welcome  it,  for  we  mean  to  let  it  do  its 
work,  and  the  words  "cleansing  fire" 
have  a  power  with  us. 

To  let  suffering  do  its  work  we  must 
learn  in  so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  detach 
ourselves  from  it.  I  know  a  woman 

73 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

who  had  an  unusually  useful  occupation 
among  men  and  other  women,  the  cir- 
cumstances of  whose  life,  as  well  as  the 
inheritance  of  a  tendency  to  painful  de- 
pression, caused  her  the  keenest  suffer- 
ing. This  woman  learned  so  to  detach 
herself  from  her  mental  pain,  without 
either  tension  or  repression,  that  no  one 
with  whom  she  was  working  even  sus- 
pected it ;  and  she  told  me  that  she  was 
surprised  in  the  midst  of  her  work  one 
day,  when  she  was  suffering  most  keenly, 
to  hear  some  one  whom  she  had  been 
serving,  looking  up  at  her  with  a  glowing 
face,  say,  "How  happy  you  must  be!" 
The  exclamation  was  indeed  a  tribute 
to  the  fact  that  the  woman  detached 
herself  from  her  suffering,  endured,  and 
worked  on.  To  detach,  to  endure  and 
to  work  --  that  is  the  secret  of  letting 
suffering  strengthen  us,  and  there  must 
be  back  of  that  another  secret  which 
74 


ABOUT  SUFFERING 

is  the  motive  of  all,  the  secret  of  trust 
and  obedience.  Trust  in  and  obedience 
to  the  Lord  who  made  us.  If  we  believe 
in  Him  at  all,  we  must  believe  that  He 
is  guiding  us  to  our  best  happiness  and 
that  He  permits  suffering  to  that  end. 

In  much  suffering  there  seems  to  be 
a  fight  going  on  within  us.  Forces  of 
good  and  evil  seem  to  use  some  men  as 
a  battle  ground.  When  the  men  de- 
tach themselves,  endure,  and  do  their 
duty,  the  forces  have  a  clear  field,  and 
as  "all  hell  is  as  nothing  before  God", 
the  good  is  sure  to  conquer,  provided 
that  we  leave  it  a  clear  field.  It  seems 
wonderful  that  we  can  even  witness  our 
own  suffering,  witness  the  process  of  the 
fight  within  us.  God  fights  in  us ;  we 
step  aside  and  do  our  work.  We  trust 
and  obey. 

If  we  mix  ourselves  up  in  the  fight,  we 
only  interfere,  but  by  refusing  to  act 

75 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

from  suggestions  of  selfishness  and  evil, 
and  by  insisting  that  we  act  upon  sug- 
gestions that  remind  us  of  our  duty  and 
suggestions  of  good  that  do  not  inter- 
fere, we  leave  the  field  clear  for  battle. 

The  minute  we  begin  to  suffer,  we 
should  make  use  of  it.  Let  it  clear  us 
out.  Attend  to  our  business,  which  is 
to  see  that  it  does  its  work  within  us. 
If  war  must  be  —  if  the  carnage,  the 
horror,  the  hell  of  war  is  permitted,  let 
us  see  that  in  so  far  as  each  one  of  us  is 
concerned,  all  the  suffering  that  results 
does  its  work.  If  each  individual,  wait- 
ing and  watching,  even  though  at  the 
same  time  busy  with  all  possible  ways  of 
helping,  does  not  let  the  suffering  befog 
him,  but  himself  uses  the  pain  to  learn 
to  endure  and  to  be  cleansed  and  stimu- 
lated, he  can  do  this  good  work  in  his 
thoughts  of  and  for  others  as  well  as 
thoughts  for  himself. 
76 


ABOUT  SUFFERING 

If  each  individual  in  the  war  itself 
takes  suffering  intelligently  and  trust- 
fully, —  no  matter  how  great  it  is  nor 
how  much  all  those  about  him  are 
suffering,  —  if  he  keeps  himself  detached 
and  takes  from  the  suffering  its  best  sug- 
gestions,, -  -  then,  through  the  effort  of 
each  man  actually  in  the  war,  and  the 
effort  of  each  man  and  woman  at  home 
working  for  the  war,  there  will  be  a 
combined  and  collective  work  making 
directly  for  peace,  and  the  best  peace  — 
real  peace,  lasting  peace. 

You  see,  except  when  a  man  is  raging 
and  fuming,  and  "suffering"  because  he 
does  not  get  his  own  way,  —  which  is 
all  hell,  —  suffering  has  in  it  both  hell 
and  heaven.  It  is,  as  I  have  said,  a 
combat  within  us.  If  we  do  our  duty, 
and  in  doing  it  accept  all  suggestions 
from  heaven,  refusing  with  healthy  hatred 
every  temptation  from  hell,  we  are  throw- 
77 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

ing  ourselves  on  God's  mercy,  and  God's 
side  always  wins  in  the  end.  It  is  ac- 
cording to  the  behavior  of  the  man  who 
is  the  field  of  battle  whether  heaven 
conquers  sooner  or  later,  sometimes, 
alas !  very  much  later.  The  man  him- 
self must  fulfil  the  conditions,  and  as  he 
does  fulfil  the  conditions,  God  does  the 
work.  Interior  intelligence  grows  in  us 
as  we  strive  to  fulfil  the  conditions  rightly, 
but  intellectual  theory  without  intelligent 
action  is  destructive. 

It  seems  strange  to  know  that  there 
can  be  both  hell  and  heaven  in  the  en- 
durance of  physical  pain,  but  no  one 
who  has  once  seen  the  growth  of  a  charac- 
ter resulting  from  the  yielding  endurance 
of  intense  physical  pain  could  doubt  that 
the  man  had  come  through  a  combat 
and  conquered.  Physical  pain  when 
severe  and  continuous  rouses  every 
weakness  a  man  has,  and  in  the  process 
78 


ABOUT  SUFFERING 

of  not  yielding  to  the  selfish  weakness 
and  using  one's  will  positively  to  relax 
from  the  tension  of  the  pain,  we  go 
through  a  fiery  furnace  and  come  out 
by  just  so  much  —  clear  gold. 

Suffering  is  a  means  to  an  end,  and  the 
end  is  that  we  may  gain  habitual  trust  in 
and  obedience  to  God.  When  we  see  it  as 
such,  and  use  it  as  such,  every  time  we  get 
through  and  out  in  the  fresh  air  and  the 
open,  we  see  with  new  clearness  that  for 
suffering  and  its  cleansing  power  we  can 
only  "thank  God",  and  again  we  see  that 
man  must  be  guided  through  suffering 
to  reach  the  higher  place  where  there 
is  no  suffering.  Only  so  can  a  man  be 
truly  human,  and  to  be  truly  human  is 
to  be  truly  angelic. 


79 


CHAPTER  6 

The  Power  of  Cleanness 

IT  seems,  when  you  think  of  it,  ex- 
ceedingly strange  that  a  man  or  a 
woman  should  prefer  to  breathe  foul 
air  rather  than  fresh  air  —  should  prefer 
it !  It  seems  equally  strange  that  any 
man  should  be  willing  to  have  his  mind 
smeared  with  dirt,  with  filth,  that  is 
notoriously  vitiating  —  and  a  notorious 
breeder  of  disease.  It  is  more  strange 
when  we  realize  that  no  one,  not  even 
the  vicious,  when  you  question  directly, 
has  the  slightest  doubt  but  that  it  is 
good  to  have  a  clean  mind.  Indeed,  I 
have  seen  men  whose  habits  were  low 
and  evil  seek  the  refreshment  of  others 
whose  minds  were  clean,  and  enjoy  a 
real  sense  of  relief  when  their  ugly  ad- 
80 


THE   POWER  OF  CLEANNESS 

vances  were  repulsed  with  decision  by 
those  to  whom  they  were  made. 

I  know  a  man  —  a  soldier  —  who 
found  himself  necessarily  placed  with  a 
number  of  other  men  who  were  vicious 
in  habit  and  loose  and  low  in  their 
language.  This  man  kept  himself  free 
and  clear  from  the  bad  air  generated  by 
his  companions,  not  at  all  taking  the 
attitude  of  a  prude,  but  freely  con- 
fessing that  he  preferred  cleanness  to 
uncleanness.  He  preferred  fresh  air  to 
foul.  He  had  a  healthy  hatred  of  their 
low  ways,  and  his  hatred  was  intelligent, 
not  mere  wholesome  ignorance.  This 
man  was  made  fun  of,  he  was  scouted, 
every  loose  epithet  that  could  be  thrown 
at  him  was  thrown,  at  intervals.  And 
as  his  hatred  of  their  foul  air  was  both 
intelligent  and  wholesome,  he  had  no 
wish  to  stir  up  more  foul  air  by  retali- 
ation or  by  getting  indignant.  He  even 
81 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

knew  that  any  apparent  effort  on  his 
part  to  reform  any  one  or  all  of  the  men 
about  him  would  tend  to  make  things 
worse ;  so  he  simply  went  his  way,  at- 
tended to  his  duty,  was  always  healthy 
and  strong  and  ready  for  work  and  un- 
swervingly courteous.  One  day,  to  his 
very  great  surprise,  one  of  the  men  who 
had  been  throwing  stones  at  him,  after 
standing  next  him  for  a  time  in  a  piece 
of  work  that  had  been  assigned  to  both, 
said:  "I  wish  you  knew  my  brother; 
he  is  your  kind,  and  I  might  as  well  tell 
you  —  perhaps  you  would  like  to  know 
-  there  is  not  a  man  in  this  company 
who  does  not  respect  you."  Such  a  re- 
mark as  that  coming  from  one  of  the 
loosest  of  the  set  took  my  friend's  breath 
away.  He  could  only  say  "thank  you" 
and  that  was  enough  ;  neither  of  the  men 
wanted  to  talk  about  it.  "But  I  tell 
you  what  it  is,"  said  my  friend  to  me, 
82 


THE  POWER  OF  CLEANNESS 

"every  man  has  the  love  of  cleanness 
in  him,  if  he  will  only  have  sense  enough 
to  find  it  and  to  stay  there." 

Cassio  says,  "O  God,  that  men  should 
put  an  enemy  in  their  mouths  to  steal 
away  their  brains."  With  what  greater 
force  could  a  man  say,  "O  God,  that 
men  should  pollute  Thy  creative  power 
and  thus  destroy  their  lives." 

The  creative  power  —  the  creative 
power  —  that  is  the  power  that  men 
and  women  profane  and  pervert  in  their 
loose  and  wanton  attraction  for  one 
another,  and  the  selfish,  destructive  mis- 
use they  make  of  it.  The  perversion 
of  the  Creative  Power !  That  is  why 
such  perversion  leads  to  the  lowest 
hell.  That  it  leads  to  hell  through 
roads  that  seem  pleasant  and  delightful, 
that  it  leads  to  hell  sometimes  with 
such  force,  with  apparent  vigor,  is  be- 
cause it  is  the  perversion  of  so  great  a 

83 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

power.  The  opposite  to  the  lowest  hell 
is  the  highest  heaven.  The  Creative 
Power  is  not  only  centered  in  the  sexual 
relations  of  men  and  women,  it  is  every- 
where, for  wherever  life  is  there  it  must 
be ;  it  is  in  all  living  things,  and  it  is 
God's  greatest  power  for  use.  If  we 
yield  to  its  perversions,  we  are  lost,  but 
if  we  respect  and  obey  its  law  with  an 
intelligent,  prayerful  spirit,  then  we 
bring  ourselves  to  where  the  Father  of 
Life  Himself  can  guide  us,  and  can  keep 
us  in  the  paths  of  wholesome  and  con- 
structive living  in  all  directions.  Then 
a  man's  or  a  woman's  mind  can  be  opened 
to  see  the  truth  that 

"If  any  two  creatures  grew  into  one, 
They  would  do  more  than  the  world  has 

done : 

Though  each  apart  were  never  so  weak, 
Ye  vainly  through  the  world  should  seek 
For  the  knowledge  and  the  might 
Which  in  such  union  grew  their  right" 

84 


THE  POWER  OF  CLEANNESS 

This  is  the  ideal  of  marriage,  and  no  man 
and  woman  could  grow  into  one  while 
either  or  both  were  indulging  their  own 
selfishness.  And  the  very  worst  indul- 
gence of  our  own  selfishness  is  misusing 
and  perverting  for  our  own  pleasure 
the  Lord's  creative  power. 

Witness  one  great  proof  of  this  fact  — 
that  such  misuse  never  brings  permanent 
satisfaction.  It  leads  on  and  on  and 
on  to  satiety  and  to  destruction.  It 
is  destructive,  dissipating  and  rotting  in 
its  effect.  "Rotting"  I  use  that  word 
advisedly.  The  folly  of  man  in  abusing 
the  constructive  power  of  the  creative 
life,  and  perverting  it  to  all  that 
is  destructive  would  seem  impossible 
if  we  did  not  know  well  the  blind- 
ing, pushing,  overwhelming  power  of 
man's  selfishness  when  once  it  has 
gathered  momentum.  In  sexual  temp- 
tation, to  "  conquer  beginnings  "  is  more 

85 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

helpful  than  anything  else;  in  conquer- 
ing beginnings  our  eyes  are  opened  to 
see  the  wonderful  beauty  and  power  for 
Use  in  God's  creative  life.  Our  hearts  are 
opened  to  a  deep  and  deeper  reverence 
for  that  life,  and  when  once  the  happy 
sense  of  God's  fresh  air  comes  to  us,  — 
though  our  first  sense  of  it  may  be  ever  so 
Taint,  —  we  could  no  more  pervert  it  than 
we  could  dash  an  innocent  baby  against 
the  stones. 

The  power  of  a  clean  sexual  life  is 
shown  graphically  in  Kipling's  "Brush- 
wood Boy."  The  "Boy"  was  sent  into 
the  wilderness  with  a  detachment  of 
bullies  with  the  hope  that  he  might  lick 
them  into  shape,  which  he  did ;  and 
they  returned  in  a  state  of  order  that 
amazed  the  other  officers,  —  "singing 
the  praises  of  their  lieutenant." 

"'How  did  you  do  it,  young  man?' 
the  adjutant  asked. 
86 


THE  POWER  OF  CLEANNESS 

'"Oh,  I  sweated  the  beef  off  of  'em, 
and  then  I  sweated  some  muscle  on  to 
'em.  It  was  rather  a  lark.' 

"'If  that's  your  way  of  lookin'  at  it, 
we  can  give  you  all  the  larks  you  want. 
Young  Davies  isn't  feelin'  quite  fit,  and 
he's  next  for  detachment  duty.  Care  to 
go  for  him  ? ' 

"  '  Sure  he  wouldn't  mind  ?  I  don't 
want  to  shove  myself  forward,  you 
know.' 

"'  You  needn't  bother  on  Davies's  ac- 
count. We'll  give  you  the  sweepin's  of 
the  coops,  and  you  can  see  what  you 
can  make  of  'em.' 

"'All  right,'  said  Cottar.  'It's  better 
fun  than  loafin'  about  cantonments.' 

"'Rummy  thing,'  said  the  adjutant, 
after  Cottar  had  returned  to  the  wilder- 
ness with  twenty  other  devils  worse 
than  the  first;  'if  Cottar  only  knew  it, 
half  the  women  in  the  station  would 

87 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

give    their    eyes  —  confound    'em  !  —  to 
have  the  young  un  in  tow.' ' 

But  Cottar  didn't  know  it,  and  he 
did  not  want  to  know  it,  and  if  he  had 
known  it,  he  would  have  paid  no  atten- 
tion to  it.  For  women  of  that  sort  had 
no  attraction  for  Cottar,  and  there  was 
only  one  woman  who  meant  anything  to 
him,  beside  his  mother,  and  at  this  time 
he  did  not  even  know  her  —  except  in 
his  dreams. 

To  be  sure,  Cottar  was  born  whole- 
some and  healthy -minded ;  he  had  no 
temptation  to  be  unclean.  His  use  of 
God's  creative  power  to  build  up  men 
came  to  him  naturally,  and  his  rev- 
erence for  the  one  woman  made  him 
look  at  all  other  women  from  her  point 
of  view  only.  The  consequence  was 
that  he  was  a  heartily  good  and  true 
friend  to  all  women  because  of  his  love 
and  reverence  for  the  one. 
88 


THE  POWER  OF  CLEANNESS 

It  is  possible  for  a  man,  not  like  Cot- 
tar, but  with  fierce  temptations,  to  rec- 
ognize their  destructive  power  and  to 
conquer  beginnings,  so  that  the  Cre- 
ative force  will  come  to  him  only  for 
its  best  use.  Such  a  man  could  have 
even  greater  power  than  Cottar,  for  he 
would  be  using  it  with  deeper  intelli- 
gence, and  his  understanding  and  hatred 
of  the  destructive  power  of  evil  would 
have  made  him  impregnable.  He  might 
find  the  one  woman  and  he  might  not, 
but  he  would  always  be  ready  for  her. 

Cottar,  naturally,  never  guessed  the 
fact  that  it  was  the  cleanness  of  his  own 
mind  that  made  it  possible  for  him  to 
transmit  his  power  to  the  men  he  was 
given  to  train.  A  man  who  had  felt 
the  fierceness  of  temptation  and  who 
had  conquered  would  understand  and 
would  prove  himself  a  ruler  of  men 
amid  more  difficult  surroundings. 
89 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

Sexual  attraction  is  the  creative  power. 
It  is  good  and  true  and  right  when  it  is 
not  misused  and  when  it  is  the  servant 
of  a  pure  heart  and  a  clean  mind.  It  is 
hellish  when  it  is  not.  Imagine  not 
holding  the  creative  power  as  sacred, 
and  playing  with  it  as  if  it  were  some- 
thing amusing,  something  of  our  own 
given  us  for  our  own  selfish  pleasure ! 
Worse  still,  think  of  polluting  it,  pollut- 
ing ourselves  with  its  brutal  misuse,  and 
polluting  at  the  same  time  another  fel- 
low being ! 

It  is  hard  to  imagine  a  man,  who  has 
a  mother  whom  he  has  cared  for  at  all, 
being  willing  to  destroy  the  life  of  an- 
other woman  —  or  to  take  his  share  in 
such  mutual  destruction.  There  are 
brutes,  —  or,  one  might  better  say,  men 
lower  than  brutes,  —  whose  minds  are 
so  defiled  that  they  cannot  see  what 
cleanness  means.  Chastity  is  literally 
90 


THE  POWER  OF  CLEANNESS 

unknown  to  them.  Then  there  are  other 
men  and  women  to  whom  chastity  is  a 
negative  thing.  It  is  simply  not  doing 
what  one  is  tempted  to  do  because  one 
has  been  taught  that  it  is  wrong.  Or 
not  doing  what  one  is  tempted  to  do  be- 
cause it  is  a  breeder  of  disease,  and  a 
man  selfishly  wishes  to  avoid  disease. 
Such  men  may  live  an  entirely  unclean 
life  with  their  wives,  and  consider  it 
all  right,  when  in  itself  it  is  quite  as 
degrading  as  open  prostitution. 

It  is  the  positive  power  of  chastity  that 
men  and  women  need  to  learn  and  need 
to  live  from.  No  one  can  know  the  full 
power  of  marriage  unless  at  the  same 
time  recognizing  the  positive  power  of 
chastity. 

It  is  good  to  think  what  a  child  could 
be,  what  a  foundation  of  health  and 
strength  and  power  for  use,  and  what 
natural  freedom  from  self -consciousness 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

a  child  could  have,  born  of  parents  who 
mutually  loved  and  felt  the  positive 
power  of  chastity  and  who  reverenced 
with  all  their  hearts  the  Lord's  creative 
power. 

The  right  relations  of  all  men  and 
women  lead  to  unselfish  use  and  to  keen 
human  perceptions.  Such  relations 
make  a  man  a  man,  and  a  woman  a 
woman. 

If  men  who  appreciated  that  fact 
would  at  the  same  time  get  the  con- 
viction that  there  is  no  man  or  woman, 
no  matter  how  low,  who  has  not  some- 
where inside  a  conscious  or  unconscious 
longing  for  positive  chastity,  and  would 
aim  to  arouse  that  longing  in  their  com- 
panions first  by  their  own  uprightness, 
the  result  of  such  effort  would  be  more 
often  successful  than  one  might  think. 
Chastity  is  normal  to  all  men  who  are 
not  being  ruled  "by  their  own  selfishness. 
92 


CHAPTER  7 
Shell  Shock1 

THE  laws  that  apply  to  the  power 
of  gaining  relief  from  shell  shock 
apply   equally  to   gaining  relief 
from   all   strain,   whatever    may  be   the 
cause.     Therefore,    if   in   this  chapter   I 
seem    to    wander    from    the    immediate 
subject,  it  is  because    the  universal  ap- 
plication of  the  habits  which  relieve  men 

l" Although  the  term  'shell-shock'  has  been  applied  to  a 
group  of  affections,  many  of  which  cannot  strictly  be  desig- 
nated as  'shock',  and  into  the  causation  of  which  the  effect  of 
the  explosion  of  shells  is  merely  one  of  many  exciting  factors, 
the  term  has  now  come  to  possess  a  more  or  less  definite  sig- 
nificance in  official  documents  and  current  conversation  .  .  . 
therefore  it  is  to  be  understood  as  a  popular  but  inadequate 
title  for  all  those  mental  effects  of  war  experience  which  are 
sufficient  to  incapac  tate  a  man  from  the  performance  of  his 
military  duties."  —  "Shell-Shock"  by  G.  Elliott  Smith,  Dean 
of  the  Faculty  of  Medicine  in  London,  and  T.  H.  Pear,  Lec- 
turer in  Experimental  Psychology  —  London. 

93 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

from  all  strain  would  enlighten  the  reader 
more  on  the  one  subject  of  relief  from 
shell  shock. 

Shell  shock  is  a  sudden  sharp  concus- 
sion to  the  nerves  and  muscles  which 
seriously  impedes  the  circulation  in  both. 
The  fright  which  naturally  accompanies 
such  a  shock  —  whether  conscious  or 
unconscious  —  increases  the  strain  and 
arouses  in  the  imagination  ideas  which 
again  react  upon  the  nerves  and  tend^ 
still  further  to  impede  the  circulation, 
thus  retaining  and  increasing  the  effects 
of  the  first  shock. 

Is  there  any  way  by  which  the  effect 
of  shell  shock  can  be  eased  ?  Yes.  There 
is  a  very  distinct  way.  A  man  can  learn 
to  yield  to  or  loosen  the  strain  produced 
by  the  shock,  so  that  it  will  go  through 
him  and  out  of  him,  leaving  him,  of 
course,  with  a  sense  of  great  fatigue,  but 
nothing  worse. 

94 


SHELL  SHOCK 

Let  me  illustrate :  suppose  a  rubber 
ball  were  thrown  at  a  wall  made  of  solid 
stone.  The  ball  would  rebound,  and  the 
solid  stone  would  have  vibrated  a  very 
tiny  bit.  Then  suppose  a  cannon  ball 
were  thrown  against  the  wall ;  there 
would  be  less  rebound  and  the  wall 
would  be  shaken.  Again,  suppose  a 
shell  were  to  break  near  the  wall ;  the 
wall  then  would  be  shattered  to  pieces. 

Now  let  us  suppose  a  fog  so  dense  that 
it  has  the  appearance  of  a  stone  wall. 
A  man  throws  a  ball  against  it,  and  ex- 
pects the  ball  to  rebound,  but  instead, 
it  goes  through  the  fog,  the  fog  closes 
over  it,  the  ball  disappears,  and  there  is 
the  apparent  stone  wall,  intact.  An- 
other man  tries  it  with  a  cannon  ball 
and  the  same  thing  occurs :  the  cannon 
ball  disappears,  and  there  is  the  wall, 
as  if  nothing  had  happened.  Then  a 
shell  comes  along;  it  bursts,  there  is 

95 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

a  terrific  commotion,  and  when  the  com- 
motion has  calmed  down,  there  is  the 
wall  of  fog,  safe  as  ever. 

We  can  make  of  our  nerves  just  that 
kind  of  wall  when  we  learn  to  yield 
to  or  drop  resistance  to  shell  shock. 

The  stone  wall  resists  the  shock  of 
ball  or  shell,  and  therefore  is  weakened 
or  shattered,  according  to  the  sharpness 
of  the  stroke,  while  the  wall  of  fog 
simply  lets  the  force  go  through  it.  So 
it  is  with  the  nerves :  if  the  man  resists, 
he  suffers  from  the  shock;  if  he  yields, 
and  lets  its  effects  go  through  his  nerves 
and  out  of  them,  his  recovery  is  certain. 

There  can,  of  course,  be  no  actual 
preventive  of  shell  shock,  but  recovery 
may  be  greatly  hastened  and  much  suf- 
fering saved  by  an  intelligent  under- 
standing and  application  of  this  prin- 
ciple. 

The  reason  for  yielding,  —  with  the 
96 


SHELL  SHOCK 

will,  —  and  dropping  all  superfluous  ten- 
sion is  to  open  the  channels  of  circulation 
of  the  body,  and  get  the  refreshing  and 
curative  power  which  always  comes  with 
healthy  circulation.  If  one  yielded  and 
relaxed  abnormally,  the  effect  would  be 
toward  a  certain  flabbiness  which  would 
impede  the  circulation  as  much  as  strain. 
The  idea  is  to  relax  to  the  point  of  equi- 
librium. 

With  any  shock  of  pain,  or  sense  of 
fear  or  anxiety,  there  is  always  a  certain 
amount  of  nervous  and  muscular  ten- 
sion, which  is  sympathetically  increased 
by  tension  all  over  the  body.  This  ten- 
sion is,  of  course,  increased  nerve  strain, 
and  by  impeding  the  circulation,  in- 
creases the  pain,  —  whether  it  be  a  little 
or  a  big  pain,  —  and  so  interferes  with 
nature's  normal  process  of  health.  For 
instance,  if  in  pain  or  fear  you  find  your 
hands  clenched,  your  throat  held  tight, 
97 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

your  tongue  cleaving  to  the  roof  of  your 
mouth,  or  your  muscles  all  over  your 
body  drawn  and  tight,  by  the  intelligent 
use  of  your  will  you  can  drop  this  ten- 
sion, thus  reducing  the  pain  to  its  mini- 
mum ;  or,  if  in  fear,  in  many  cases  get- 
ting rid  of  it  altogether.  There  are 
many  other  finer  forms  of  tension  ac- 
companying these  that  you  cannot  ob- 
serve because  they  are  too  minute,  and 
these  may  be  dropped  in  sympathy  with 
the  other  kind. 

Putting  all  your  attention  on  the 
effort  to  yield  distracts  the  mind,  and 
the  distraction  is  at  the  same  time  doing 
positive  work  toward  health  and  free- 
dom and  a  normal  control  of  the  body, 
whereas  other  distraction  leaves  the  body 
at  the  mercies  of  the  strain  as  soon  as 
the  distraction  is  over.  The  Japanese 
have  the  secret  in  jiujitsu,  or  conquering 
by  yielding.  They  use  it  to  a  powerful 
98 


SHELL  SHOCK 

extent  in  dealing  with  their  opponents, 
whether  physically  or  in  argument. 
They  yield  positively,  with  their  minds 
steadily  aimed  toward  the  point  to  be 
gained ;  thus  by  never  meeting  force 
with  force,  and  never  for  one  instant 
relaxing  the  steadiness  of  their  aim,  they 
reach  their  goal,  often  to  the  great  sur- 
prise of  those  who  oppose  them. 

Thus  one  can  often  overcome  disease 
by  yielding,  —  that  is,  by  not  resisting  it 
in  an  impatient  or  fretful  spirit.  Nature 
always  tends  toward  health,  and  if  in 
disease  we  do  not  resist,  she  does  her 
work  and  gets  her  wholesome  way. 
Whereas,  if  we  resist,  we  stop  the  clear- 
ing-out process  of  nature  through  the 
circulation,  and  induce  inflammation, 
where  yielding  to  gain  an  open  circulation 
would,  as  we  have  said,  put  inflamma- 
tion out  of  the  question,  by  leaving  the 
channels  open. 

99 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

But  how  can  we  gain  this  power  of 
yielding  if  we  are  suddenly  in  a  tight 
place,  where  yielding  would  relieve  us, 
and  if  we  had  never  given  our  atten- 
tion to  yielding  before  ?  Of  course  there 
we  should  have  a  great  advantage  if  we 
had  given  our  attention  to  yielding,  — 
if  we  had  learned  to  give  up  the  whole 
body  and  to  drop  the  strain  of  every 
care  when  we.  went  to  sleep  at  night,  — 
to  lie  as  heavily  as  a  cat  does  when  she 
is  sound  asleep,  —  and  if  we  could  have 
learned  throughout  the  day  to  keep  those 
muscles  that  were  not  in  use  quiet  and 
free,  and  to  use  the  muscles  that  were 
working  with  only  the  amount  of  effort 
necessary.  All  this  can  be  learned  so 
that  yielding  proves  to  be  of  great  and 
increasing  power  in  preventing  strain  and 
bringing  health. 

Suppose,  however,  one  had  never  had 
the  power  of  yielding  brought  to  one's 
100 


SHELL  SHOCK 

attention  in  any  way  whatever;  if  he 
even  gets  a  hint  of  it  where  the  need 
is,  the  yielding  itself,  in  its  proper  place, 
is  so  normal  to  us  that  a  man  with  in- 
telligence will  catch  at  the  hint  and  fol- 
low it  up,  making  more  and  more  dis- 
coveries of  its  power  as  he  uses  it.  That 
will  be  the  case  unless  the  man  is  so  full 
of  his  own  personal  resistance  and  re- 
bellion that  from  very  perversity  he  says 
"  he  will  be  damned  "  if  he  will  yield, 
and  thus  stupidly  bites  off  his  own  nose. 
Such  cases  have  been. 

So  it  is  with  any  normal  human  habit 
which  we  may  use ;  if  we  once  get  a  hint 
of  it,  and  follow  that  hint  intelligently, 
nature  is  with  us  and  teaches  us. 

The  process  of  yielding  is  not  only 
that  of  loosening  the  muscles  of  the 
body,  but  implies  a  finer  yielding,  such 
as  we  spontaneously  go  through  when 
we  relax  our  minds  from  tension  or 
101 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

excitement  of  any  sort.  If  a  person 
feels  an  access  of  temper  taking  posses- 
sion of  his  brain,  he  can  greatly  help  to 
overcome  the  angry  impulse  by  quietly 
trying  to  practise  this  yielding,  or  loosen- 
ing of  the  fibers  of  the  brain.  It  requires 
a  persistent  will  and  a  little  imagination, 
and  the  power  increases  with  every 
patient  and  sincere  effort. 

As  in  the  case  of  anger:  the  effort  to 
loosen  the  fibers  of  the  brain  (or  what 
seems  to  us  like  that)  tends  to  counter- 
act the  strain  of  tension  or  thickening 
in  the  brain  which  is  the  common  effect 
of  "shell  shock",  and  to  which  its  in- 
jurious consequences  are  due. 

Many  people  argue  that  anger,  jeal- 
ousy, revenge,  or  any  other  form  of 
hatred  can  be,  and  often  is,  a  decided 
stimulant  to  action.  So  are  whiskey 
and  various  forms  of  very  strong  drugs. 
The  reaction  from  the  whiskey  and  the 
1 02 


SHELL  SHOCK 

Ougs  is  always  destructive  and  weak- 
ening to  the  will ;  the  reaction  from  the 
various  forms  of  hatred  is  equally  de- 
structive, but  slower  because  more  subtle. 
It  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  these 
selfish  and  destructive  passions  are  nor- 
mal to  men  and  can  be  legitimately 
used  to  stimulate  fighting.  A  selfish 
man  will  often  fight  from  the  stimulant 
of  selfish  passions  when  otherwise  he 
would  be  too  selfish  to  fight  at  all,  but 
that  does  not  argue  for  their  normality. 

A  man  who  fights  from  the  love  of 
right  and  obedience  to  principle  is  likely 
to  have  more  self-command  and  a  cooler 
head  than  one  whose  energy  is  stimu- 
ulated  with  personal  selfishness.  His 
vigor  is  under  better  guidance,  and 
therefore  he  wastes  it  less. 

The  manliness  required  to  face  your 
own  pride  and  fear  and  the  humility  that 
it  involves,  —  although  it  may  some- 
103 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

times  be  accompanied  by  temporary 
physical  breakdown,  —  constitutes  a 
deeper  and  more  lasting  strength  than 
merely  physical  and  nervous  strength 
when  not  accompanied  by  true  self- 
knowledge. 

A  man  who  has  the  moral  and  spiritual 
strength  to  face  and  rout,  —  by  God's 
help, --the  enemies  within  himself  is 
more  likely  to  win  out  against  his  phys- 
ical enemies  (other  things  being  equal) 
than  the  man  who  is  acting  in  the  blind- 
ness of  selfish  pride  or  selfish  passion. 

Such  a  man,  by  realizing  their  de- 
structive force  yields  up  the  tension  of 
his  selfish  pride  or  passion  in  order  that 
the  Lord  may  conquer  within  him,  and 
through  such  divine  conquest  he  receives 
strength  of  mind  and  clearness  of  soul, 
while  his  physical  nature  is  saved  from 
strain.  If  a  man  can  give  up  the  ten- 
sion which  always  accompanies  selfish 
104 


SHELL  SHOCK 

pride,  he  has  tested  the  yielding  at  its 
root,  from  which  the  yielding  to  shell 
shock,  or  any  other  severe  suffering,  is 
a  natural  derivative  —  and  compar- 
atively easy. 

I  should  like  to  use  one  more  example 
to  illustrate  the  work  to  be  done  in 
dropping  the  effects  of  shell  shock,  if  we 
have  not  done  the  work  thoroughly  the 
first  time,  which,  I  imagine,  would  sel- 
dom happen.  Imagine  a  great  length 
of  rubber  pipe  arranged  to  carry  a  strong 
force  of  water  to  a  distance.  Now  sup- 
pose the  pipe  should  get  twisted  and 
knotted.  The  strain  on  the  pipe  when 
this  pressure  of  water  came  against  the 
twists  and  the  knots  might  be  very  great 
—  great  enough  in  places  to  burst  its 
substance,  no  matter  how  strong  it  was 
in  the  beginning. 

This  is  a  clear  illustration  of  what 
any  intense  nerve  strain  might  do  to 
105 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

our  bodies.  In  the  case  of  shock  or  any 
kindred  thing,  the  heart  beats  more 
rapidly  and  with  greater  force.  There- 
fore the  blood  pressure  is  more  intense. 
Imagine  the  effect  upon  a  human  body 
with  the  pressure  of  blood  increased 
many  times,  and  the  blood  channels 
impeded  by  what  we  may  call  the  knots 
and  twists  of  the  tightening  and  stiffen- 
ing of  the  nerves  !  Such  interferences  in 
the  circulation  are  often  continuous  after 
shell  shock,  and  are  extreme  in  the  case 
of  severe  wounds  or  over-fatigue.  If  in 
such  cases  the  man  knew  how  to  use 
his  will  to  yield,  and  insisted  upon  re- 
laxing all  through  his  body,  the  result 
of  opening  and  quieting  the  circulation 
would  at  first  be  surprising,  and  as  the 
man  got  accustomed  to  the  good  effect 
of  yielding,  the  tendency  to  yield  would 
come  to  him  as  a  matter  of  course  when- 
ever he  needed  it.  And  let  us  hope 
1 06 


SHELL  SHOCK 

that  having  enjoyed  the  good  effects 
himself,  he  would  be  eager  to  share  the 
knowledge  with  his  fellows. 

Sometimes  one  is  suffering  so  that 
yielding  seems  entirely  impossible. 
Such  times  are  special  opportunities  for 
strengthening  the  will,  for  in  cases  like 
this  one  must  insist  steadily  and  per- 
sistently until  "the  impossible"  has  been 
accomplished.  Where  the  suffering  is 
so  intense,  and  you  begin  to  try  to 
yield,  your  mind  may  relax  its  vigilance 
a  thousand  times,  and  the  tension  of 
pain  will  assert  itself;  but  you  must 
bring  your  mind  back  to  the  yielding 
each  one  of  the  thousand  times,  and  the 
thousand  and  first  time  you  may  ac- 
complish it.  And  when  once  the  yield- 
ing is  acquired,  and  the  right  habit  is 
established,  a  man  can  see  that  the  re- 
lief is  worth  all  the  work  he  has  given  to 
gain  it  —  and  more. 
107 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

The  normal  thing  for  our  nerves  to  do  is 
to  yield  to  the  shock,  and  so  to  recover  their 
habitual  stability  and  normal  circulation  in 
the  soonest  possible  time.  The  elasticity 
of  even  moderately  healthy  nerves  is 
really  splendid,  if  we  let  them  work  ac- 
cording to  nature's  way. 

It  is  the  resistance  to  the  shock,  and 
a  man's  holding  such  resistance  instead  of 
dropping  it,  which  causes  the  suffering. 

Of  course  there  is  a  certain  amount  of 
resistance  that  must  come ;  shell  shock 
is  sudden,  and  resistance  is  immediate, 
and  this  principle  applies  to  yielding  to 
the  after  effects,  which  yielding  can  be- 
gin almost  at  once,  if  a  man  can  recover 
himself  sufficiently  to  get  his  will  focussed 
upon  it. 

Two  things  are  to  be  noted  especially : 

the    first    is    that    it  takes    a  great   deal 

more  will  to  yield   than   to  tighten   one's 

self  up    and   push    through    an   obstacle; 

1 08 


SHELL  SHOCK 

the  second  is  this :  to  know  that  the 
very  force  of  will  and  concentration 
necessary  to  get  the  habit  of  a  normal 
yielding  strengthens  and  increases  the 
ability  of  the  mind  for  quick  and  exact 
action.  It  seems  to  be  like  the  centrif- 
ugal and  the  centripetal  motions  of  the 
earth  —  the  one  needs  the  other. 

True  concentration  is  in  reality  drop- 
ping everything  that  interferes.  There- 
fore, healthy  yielding  up  of  things  we 
do  not  want  strengthens  the  power  of 
concentration  on  the  things  that  we  do 
want.  We  are  depositing  a  force  in 
our  subconsciousness  which  will  aid  us 
in  all  directions,  especially,  as  was  said, 
in  quietness  and  exactness  of  action. 

If  one  persists  in  yielding,  and  loosen- 
ing, every  time  there  is  good  cause  for 
it,  each  time  the  normal  yielding  grows 
easier,  and  the  good  effect  is  better  and 
is  more  quickly  felt. 
109 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

Thus  we  can  see  that  to  reduce  shell 
shock  to  the  minimum,  and  eventually 
to  be  free  from  its  evil  and  painful  ef- 
fects altogether,  all  that  is  needed  is 
a  steady,  quiet  and  hard-working  will 
and  a  well-focussed  common  intelligence. 
This  war  has  brought  the  experience  of 
shell  shock  and  many  more  kindred 
sufferings  to  our  attention,  and  in  con- 
sequence all  such  suffering  may  now 
give  rise  to  remedies  which  in  the  future 
may  lighten  or  prevent  pain,  for  which 
before  there  was  supposed  to  be  no 
remedy.  That  is,  it  may  lead  us  all  to 
the  habit  of  managing  our  nerves  more 
normally.  To-day,  if  these  elements 
should  be  carefully  considered,  and  men 
taught  as  part  of  their  regular  military 
training  to  conquer  the  evil  effects 
of  shell  shock,  it  might  add  greatly  to 
the  efficiency  of  our  army  and  perhaps 
even  to  the  armies  of  our  allies, 
no 


SHELL  SHOCK 

Let  me  explain  again :  the  vibrations 
of  the  bursting  of  the  shell  are  so  in- 
tense and  hit  the  body  with  such  tre- 
mendous force  that  all  the  resistance  in 
the  man  reacts  against  it.  This  re- 
action is  so  immeasurably  greater  than 
anything  that  any  man  has  ever  felt 
before  that  of  course  the  effect  is,  so  to 
speak,  to  "mess  everything  up"  in  the 
man's  physiology,  to  disturb  his  cir- 
culation beyond  belief,  especially  that  of 
the  brain,  and  to  start  a  terrible  turmoil 
within  him.  No  wonder  a  man  feels 
beside  himself  in  a  state  like  that.  And 
when  the  temptation  comes  to  take  all 
this  mess  into  his  mind,  as  indeed  it 
always  does,  unless  the  man  has  learned 
better,  the  mess,  having  been  accepted 
by  the  mind,  takes  painful  forms  in  the 
imagination  and  reacts  upon  the  body ; 
the  body  again  reacts  back  upon  the 
mind,  and  so  it  goes  —  increasing  the 
in 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

suffering  many,  many  times  more  than 
is  necessary. 

But  how  is  a  man  going  to  know 
enough  to  detach  himself  from  his  sensa- 
tions after  a  shock  like  that,  so  that 
nature  can  remedy  the  evil  effects  of 
the  shock  with  the  certain  rapidity 
with  which  she  always  heals  and  cures, 
provided  she  is  given  half  a  chance? 

As  we  have  said  before,  nature  al- 
ways tends  toward  health,  and  she  tends 
toward  health  so  heartily  and  whole- 
somely that  at  times  her  cures  may 
seem  miraculous.  They  are  not  mirac- 
ulous, they  are  in  nature's  own  order, 
if  we  give  her  ample  opportunity.  The 
trouble  is  that  we  have  not  been  in  the 
habit  of  giving  her  such  opportunity ; 
neither  have  our  grandfathers  nor  our 
great-grandfathers  formed  that  habit. 
Therefore,  we  have  nothing  in  our  in- 
heritance to  help  us  to  cooperate  with 
112 


SHELL  SHOCK 

nature.  But  even  though  we  have  not 
inherited  normal  habits  of  obedience  to 
the  laws  of  nature,  they  are  working 
just  the  same ;  and  we,  all  of  us,  are 
entirely  able  to  learn  to  obey  them  so 
that  now  —  to-day  —  our  ancestors  to 
the  contrary  notwithstanding,  we  may 
learn  to  drop  everything  that  inter- 
feres with  our  obedience,  and  so  gain 
the  habit  of  obeying  as  a  matter  of 
course. 

\  What  better  time  could  there  be  for 
men  to  learn  how  to  get  the  benefit  of 
nature's  perfect  work  than  now,  when 
we  are  immersed  in  a  war  for  the  right, 
and  need  the  best  help  of  every  man 
and  woman  in  the  country? 

A  man  gets  shell  shock ;  he  takes  the 
shock  into  his  mind  —  that  is,  he  allows 
his  mind  to  be  affected  by  the  disturb- 
ance in  his  body.  If  he  is  a  sensitive 
man,  "taking  it  into  his  mind"  rouses 


his  imagination,  and  all  sorts  of  nervous 
horrors  are  conjured  up  within  him,  in 
just  the  shapes  that  could  torture  him 
most.  His  mind  with  his  imagination, 
as  I  have  said  before,  reacts  back  on 
to  his  body,  and  so  they  play  back  and 
forth,  back  and  forth,  like  dogs  in  a 
fight,  until  the  man,  of  course,  must  be 
sent  to  the  hospital,  with  months,  per- 
haps years,  of  suffering  before  him,  and 
his  usefulness  to  his  country  gone  —  for 
some  time,  at  least. 

All  that  action  and  reaction  was  not 
the  man's  fault,  not  in  the  least.  The 
bravest  man  in  the  world  could  suffer 
in  just  that  way.  Probably  the  bravest 
man  in  the  world  would  be  the  very  one 
to  suffer  most  keenly,  for  a  man  who  is 
truly  brave  is  always  sensitive.  The 
fault  is  in  the  man's  being  ignorant  of  the 
simplest  laws  of  psychology  and  physi- 
ology, and  not  having  been  trained  to 
114 


SHELL  SHOCK 

use  his  will  and  his  intelligence  in  the 
right  direction. 

Any  man  who  will  accept  the  truth 
can  be  trained  to  detach  himself  from 
pain,  enough  not  to  "take  it  into  his 
mind",  and  so  to  let  nature  do  her  best 
to  heal  and  to  cure  him.  The  pain  may 
seem  to  be  no  less  severe,  but  the  pro- 
cess of  cure  is  immeasurably  more  rapid. 

The  habit  of  "joking"  one's  self  away 
from  suffering,  which  is  so  prevalent 
among  our  men,  is  an  effort  in  that 
direction,  but  there  come  times  when 
joking  does  not  work.  Joking,  useful  as 
it  may  be  sometimes,  has  the  tendencies 
of  an  opiate;  too  much  of  it  weakens 
the  mind  and  then  fails  in  its  power  of 
seeming  to  lighten  the  pain.  Then 
again,  as  continual  joking  kills  a  sense 
of  humor,  a  man  by  using  it  as  an  "opi- 
ate" is  losing  one  of  the  finest  qualities 
of  mind  that  there  is.  The  fact  that 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

there  comes  a  time  when  joking  palls 
seems  to  prove  that  joking  is  only  tem- 
porary distraction,  and  is  destructive 
rather  than  constructive  in  its  effect,  if 
carried  too  far.  Isn't  it  better  for  men 
to  learn  to  work  according  to  law,  and 
to  use  the  joking  perhaps  we  might  say 
as  an  occasional  condiment?  Loosening 
the  tension  of  pain,  which  is  the  normal 
method  of  detaching  us  from  it,  never 
fails  —  never  under  any  circumstances 
whatever. 

Singing  on  the  march  uses  the  lungs, 
occupies  the  mind  happily,  and  the 
result  is  the  same  as  healthy  yielding ; 
it  opens  the  channels  of  circulation.  So 
it  is  with  any  form  of  wholesome  ex- 
ercise not  taken  in  excess.  The  in- 
creased circulation  takes  away  dead  tis- 
sue, and  with  it  all  unnecessary  fatigue. 

In  every  action  there  should  be 
equal  and  responsive  reaction.  When 
116 


SHELL  SHOCK 

nerves  and  muscles  are  used  beyond  the 
point  where  such  reaction  would  be 
naturally  demanded,  then  when  the  time 
comes  for  a  man  to  give  up  and  rest,  the 
use  of  his  will  to  yield  is  simply  an  in- 
telligent assistance  to  nature,  which  is 
the  privilege  of  the  human  as  opposed  to 
the  brutal  mind. 

It  will  be  noticed  always  that  over- 
fatigue  brings  with  it  a  tendency  to 
abnormal  tension,  whereas  in  normal 
fatigue  we  unconsciously  yield  when 
the  time  comes  to  rest.  Therefore,  if 
we  use  our  wills  to  drop  the  tension  con- 
sequent on  abnormal  fatigue,  we  are 
working  with  nature  so  she  can  more 
quickly  bring  about  the  reaction  of  rest. 

Distraction,  merely  as  distraction,  is 
apt  to  have  a  drugging  effect ;  the 
tendency  to  abnormal  strain  is  still  in 
the  subconsciousness,  and  when  the  ef- 
fect of  the  distraction  wears  off,  that 
117 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

which  can  impede  the  circulation  and 
cause  all  the  consequent  suffering  comes 
to  the  surface  at  once;  the  suffering  is 
increased,  and  the  will  is  weakened. 
Whereas,  if  a  man  has  once  faced  a 
cause  of  pain  in  the  right  way,  and  then 
turns  his  attention  elsewhere,  that  healthy 
form  of  interest  and  concentration  gives 
nature  an  opportunity,  —  for  which,  one 
might  say,  she  is  always  watching,  — 
to  jump  in  and  do  her  own  work,  and 
when  a  man  returns  from  his  temporary 
interest,  he  finds  himself  better.  The 
same  rule  holds  with  unhappy  impres- 
sions and  associations. 

It  is  well  known  that  when  muscles 
are  strained  beyond  their  natural  en- 
durance, their  recovery  is  proverbially 
slow.  So  it  is  with  nerves.  Therefore, 
the  use  of  an  intelligent  will  in  yielding 
to  the  strain,  is  a  great  asset,  as  it  is 
an  active  cooperation  with  nature  in 
118 


SHELL  SHOCK 

reestablishing  the  normal  circulation, 
and  normal  action  of  the  functions.  If 
one  had  weak  legs,  one  would  try  not  to 
strain  them  where  it  was  possible  to 
save  effort.  With  nerves  it  is  the  more 
necessary,  as  they  are  the  background  of 
all  effort,  mental  or  physical,  and  to 
have  quiet  nerves  would  mean  much 
greater  efficiency  and  less  detrimental 
reaction.  It  is  important  to  remember 
that  the  nerves  touch  the  soul  on  one 
side  and  the  body  on  the  other ;  that  is, 
they  are  the  connecting  link  between 
the  ma?i  and  his  body.  Where  their 
action  is  normal,  they  need  not  be  in- 
terfered with,  but  where  abnormal,  one 
must  learn  to  control  them  from  one's  own 
will.  Strained  nerves,  which  sometimes 
come  from  the  deepest  inheritance,  are 
often  falsely  associated  with  weakness  of 
character,  but  for  a  man  to  learn  to  yield 
to  such  strain  and  control  the  nerves 
119 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

from  the  spirit  gives  him  the  greatest 
and  most  intelligent  power  he  can  have. 
Therefore,  the  compensation  for  such 
work  cannot  be  computed,  and  "weak 
nerves",  taken  from  this  point  of  view, 
can  be  the  means  by  which  a  man  finds 
himself,  and  discovers  that  when  he  learns 
to  deal  rightly  with  his  weak  nerves,  the 
process  is  a  deep  source  of  strength. 

"Don't  take  it  into  your  mind;  don't 
take  it  into  your  mind!"  If  that  in- 
junction could  be  repeated  over  and  over 
with  quiet,  steady  conviction,  —  not  only 
to  the  men  suffering  from  shell  shock,  but 
to  men  wounded  and  ill  as  well, --the 
healthy  influence  of  the  result  of  such 
training  would  be  inestimable. 

There  is  one  thing  more  I  should  like 
especially  to  mention,  to  which  this 
same  healthy  principle  can  be  applied : 
the  terrible  scenes  that  the  men  who 
have  not  been  hurt  at  all  suffer  intensely 
1 20 


from  seeing  —  the  suffering  and  the 
lacerated  state  of  other  men.  If  I  say 
"Don't  take  it  into  your  mind"  and 
"yield  to  the  strain  of  it",  I  mean  deny 
its  power  over  your  mind,  while,  so  far 
as  possible,  you  try  to  loosen  the  fibers  of 
the  brain  and  body.  And  I  should  like 
to  add  that  refusing  to  take  such  scenes 
into  your  mind,  or  to  let  your  imagi- 
nation dwell  on  them,  opens  the  human 
sympathies  and  enables  you  to  be  of 
inestimably  greater  use.  If  you  refuse 
to  take  the  horrible  sights  into  your 
mind  by  closing  your  mind  against  them, 
that  will  harden  you  and  blunt  your 
sympathies ;  but  getting  rid  of  such 
impressions  by  persistently  yielding  and 
so  dropping  them  from  your  brain  opens 
your  sympathies  and  enables  you  to 
put  your  mind  heartily  to  the  details  of 
use  to  the  sufferers. 

Yield,    yield,    yield.     Concentrate    to 
121 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

yield,  and  yield  to  concentrate.  That  is 
the  whole  of  it,  and  no  one  knows  the 
power  thus  to  be  gained  until  he  has 
tried  it.  Power  which  is  useful  in  many 
more  ways  than  those  I  have  mentioned 
here.  But  these  that  I  have  been  writing 
about  are  ways  where  so  much  intense 
suffering  may  be  prevented,  and  so  much 
new  strength  gained  that  the  need  for 
dispelling  all  ignorance  in  this  line  is 
excessive  and  immediate. 

The  human  body  is  meant  to  obey 
the  mind.  The  human  mind  should  be 
equally  obedient  to  a  law-abiding  will. 
When  men  once  know  the  truth  of  this 
fact,  they  will  begin  to  awake  to  the 
great  power  and  responsibility  that  is  per- 
mitted to  us  in  the  gift  of  our  free  wills. 

When  the  will   does  its  work  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  laws  of  nature,  which 
are  God's  laws,  it  always  has  the  power 
of  those  laws  in  reserve. 
122 


CHAPTER  8 

The  Will  to  Use  the  Bayonet 

IT  is  simple  to  see  at  once  how  dif- 
ficult, —  how  almost  impossible,  — 
it  would  be  for  a  civilized  and  good 
man  to  thrust  his  bayonet  into  the  body 
of  another  human  being  and  maim  or 
kill  him.     The  fear  of  hurting  another, 
and  still  more,  the  fear  of  killing  another, 
is  so  innate  in  the  best  of  us  that  the 
very  timidity  draws  the   bayonet   back 
when  we  would  thrust  it  forward. 

In  war  such  timidity  must  not  only  be 
entirely  conquered,  but  it  must  give 
way  entirely  —  give  way  entirely  to  the 
courage  to  kill.  A  man  must  have 
roused  within  himself  the  will  to  use  the 
bayonet,  and  that  will  must  grow  in 
123 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

skill  and  vigor,  if  the  man  is  to  do  his 
share  in  conquering  the  enemies  of  his 
country. 

There  are  two  ways  in  which  this  will 
to  use  the  bayonet  may  be  roused.  It 
can  be  roused  through  an  appeal  to  the 
evil  passions  of  the  men,  or  through  an 
appeal  to  their  good  passions.  The  first 
is  destructive  and  may  fail  at  any  time 
through  some  selfish  weakness  which 
pricks  the  evil  passions  and  deprives 
them  of  power.  Not  only  that,  but 
think  of  the  result  after  the  war ! 
When  a  man,  having  killed  one  human 
creature  after  another  from  a  sort  of 
general  revenge  and  hatred  which  have 
been  roused  in  him,  finds  no  more  use 
for  his  power  of  killing,  what  then  ? 
Is  hell  going  to  quiet  down  in  such  a 
man,  and  give  place  to  heaven  within 
him,  without  fierce  struggles  in  the  man 
himself,  and  maybe  horrible  mistakes  ? 
124 


THE  WILL  TO  USE  THE  BAYONET 

In  some  men  will  hell  ever  leave  them 
in  this  world,  having  once  possessed 
every  fiber  of  their  bodies  in  a  process 
of  what  was  to  them  wholesale  murder, 
whatever  it  may  have  been  in  itself? 

If  war  must  be,  and  at  the  present 
day  it  seems  as  if  so  long  as  the  Prus- 
sians remain  unconquered,  it  must  be; 
if  the  whole  world  is  not  yet  civilized 
enough  to  settle  the  questions  between 
nations  without  bloodshed,  —  and  so 
long  as  the  Prussian  military  spirit  is 
alive,  it  is  not,  —  it  certainly  seems  as  if 
we  might  make  use  of  war  to  get  a 
greater  civilization,  so  that  when  peace 
comes,  instead  of  hell  being  rampant  in 
many  men,  a  new  strength,  a  new  clear- 
ness, a  new  power  of  character  will  be 
roused  in  all. 

This  is  what  is  done  when  the  "will 
to  use  the  bayonet"  is  roused  and 
strengthened  and  deeply  rooted  from 

125 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

the  awakening  and  strengthening  of  the 
good  passions  in  men. 

"Why,"  said  a  British  officer,  "be- 
fore the  war  I  would  not  have  hurt  a 
mouse,  and  now  my  whole  heart  is  in 
mowing  down  as  many  Germans  as  I 
can." 

After  the  war  that  man,  —  not  be- 
cause of  what  he  said,  but  because  of 
what  was  behind  what  he  said,  —  if  he 
survives  the  war,  will  go  back,  or  I 
might  say,  go  forward  still  more  to 
where  he  "would  not  hurt  a  mouse." 

Of  course  there  are  men  who  know 
no  other  language  than  the  language  of 
revenge  and  hatred.  Presumably  it  is  of 
such  men  that  the  military  books  tell 
when  they  say  that  it  is  good  for  a 
soldier  to  have  a  mate,  that  is,  one 
especial  friend,  because  if  his  mate  gets 
killed,  grief  at  his  loss  rouses  the  man's 
revenge  and  hatred  of  the  enemy,  and  he 
126 


THE  WILL  TO   USE  THE  BAYONET 

fights  all  the  harder.  I  notice  the 
military  books  do  not  mention  the 
state  the  man  may  be  in  when  he  has 
ceased  from  such  fighting.  Military 
writers  put  great  value  upon  action, 
and  that  is  right ;  it  is  an  absolute 
necessity.  But  their  teaching  of  action 
will  never  have  in  it  the  possible  skill, 
precision,  and  alertness  that  it  might 
have  until  equal  attention  is  given  to 
reaction. 

Suppose  in  the  midst  of  vigorous 
action  a  man's  hatred  and  revenge 
should  burn  itself  out.  What  would  be 
left?  Hell  that  is  so  active  in  revenge 
often  at  some  unexpected  time  cuts  off 
its  power  in  order  that  more  evil  may 
result.  Think  of  that !  Are  we  not 
civilized  enough  as  a  people  at  least  to 
gradually  lead  our  soldiers  to  the  con 
structive  passion  of  the  will  to  use  the 
bayonet  ?  Those  who  know  no  power 
127 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

except  that  of  their  evil  passions  must 
be  allowed  to  fight  from  those  pas- 
sions ;  but  if  their  officers  are  keen 
enough,  the  privates  need  not  remain 
in  that  state  —  a  state  where  hell  can 
play  a  trick  upon  them  at  any  time. 
Hell  has  no  power  within  us,  unless  we 
give  it  power,  and  if  we  have  given 
power  in  revenge  and  hatred,  we  cannot 
at  once  withdraw  our  consent  when 
hell  chooses  to  change  the  force  of  our 
hatred  and  revenge  into  puling,  driveling 
weakness.  If  we  are  not  yet  civilized 
enough  to  be  without  war,  we  can  at 
least  grow  civilized  enough  to  cultivate 
the  will  to  use  the  bayonet  from  a  con- 
structive human  power  and  not  a  de- 
structive one. 

We  do  not  kill  men's  souls  when  we 

kill   their  bodies.     If   in  war   we   are  so 

possessed,  so  passionately  possessed  with 

the  right  of  our  own  cause,  the  power  of 

128 


THE   WILL  TO   USE  THE  BAYONET 

that  passion  carries  us,  and  by  means  of 
it  we  kill  as  many  of  the  enemy  as  we 
can  for  the  sake  of  winning  in  the  great- 
est cause  for  right  which  we  know.  If 
every  fiber  of  a  man's  body  and  his  soul 
is  filled  with  the  sense  that  he  is  fighting 
for  the  right  and  that  he  must  win  for 
the  right,  then  the  forces  of  that  right 
carry  him,  they  guide  his  hand,  they 
enable  him  to  kill  more  men  in  the 
enemies'  lines  than  he  possibly  could 
otherwise.  They  sharpen  his  power  of 
quickness  and  precision  and  carry  him  on 
toward  victory,  and  they  never  desert 
him.  As  one  wise  man  says,  a  soldier 
prays  before  he  goes  into  battle;  when 
he  is  fighting  he  forgets  his  prayer,  but 
the  prayer  is  with  him  just  the  same 
and  carries  him  and  guides  him. 

What  a  contrast  when  one  prays  to 
the  God  revealed  to  us  in  the  character 
of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  or  to  the  made- 
129 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

up  idol  of  the  selfish  lust  for  power  to 
which  the  Prussians  pray  !  The  dignity, 
the  quiet,  the  true  depth  of  humility  in 
the  character  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
make  it  possible  for  only  the  best  in  a 
man  to  perceive  His  power,  and  yet  His 
power  is  the  only  real  power  in  the 
world  or  out  of  it,  and  of  course  it  is 
the  greatest  —  it  is  the  creative  power 
of  God. 

Let  us  also  think  of  the  way  men  and 
women  are  busy  in  this  world,  in  time  of 
"  peace,"  —  killing,  destroying  one  an- 
other's souls.  When  that  destructive 
power  is  at  work,  we  find  no  timidity. 
It  works  inside,  subtly.  Sometimes  the 
soul-murder  is  evident,  sometimes  it  is 
not,  but  it  goes  on  with  a  cruelty  and 
brutality  that  seems  next  to  impossible  to 
one  that  is  observing  it.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  think  that  perhaps  the  right  will 
to  use  the  bayonet  might  open  men's 
130 


THE  WILL  TO  USE  THE  BAYONET 

minds  to  the  hellishness  of  hating  one 
another's  souls,  and  to  the  destructive 
power  of  ways  by  which  such  hatred 
finds  vent.  Much  in  the  world  that  is 
so-called  love  is  nothing  but  selfish  hatred 
because  of  the  selfishness  from  which  it 
starts. 

Now  let  us  look  at  the  possible  con- 
structive power  when  the  will  to  use 
the  bayonet  is  rightly  developed.  It  is 
easy  to  see  that  skill  is  increased  by 
coolness  or  the  absence  of  exciting  per- 
sonal emotions,  and  in  the  same  propor- 
tion, skill  must  eventually  be  diminished 
when  accompanied  by  exciting  personal 
emotions,  which  inevitably  burn  them- 
selves out. 

Think  of  a  surgeon :  he  must  keep 
for  his  patient  a  wholesome  understand- 
ing sympathy,  and  yet  be  unmoved  if 
the  patient  cries  out  in  agony.  Through 
such  a  cry  the  surgeon  must  work  with 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

steady,  delicate  skill,  not  wavering  a 
hair's  breadth,  no  matter  how  the 
patient  begs  for  mercy.  The  surgeon  is 
keeping  on  in  the  midst  of  cries  of  pain 
to  save  his  patient's  life.  Would  any 
man  say  that  surgeon  could  do  his  work 
better  if,  because  of  hatred  for  the  man 
he  operated  on,  he  enjoyed  hurting 
him?  The  good  surgeon  is  moved  by 
enthusiasm  for  his  work,  and  at  the 
root  of  that  enthusiasm  is  the  love  for 
preserving  men's  lives.  If  ether  is  im- 
possible, —  and  it  is  sometimes,  —  that 
very  love  for  preserving  men's  lives  will 
enable  the  surgeon  to  work  skilfully 
with  steady  precision  and  unswerving 
sympathy  through  a  most  painful  op- 
eration. There  are  surgeons,  doctors, 
and  nurses  who  say  they  must  harden 
themselves,  or  they  could  not  do  their 
work;  they  say,  too,  that  human  sym- 
pathy only  pulls  them  down,  because 
132 


THE  WILL  TO   USE  THE  BAYONET 

they  suffer  with  their  patients.  I  call 
the  sympathy  that  pulls  us  down  pure 
selfishness.  If  we  have  real  sympathy, 
we  must  want  to  serve  another.  To  do 
that  intelligently,  we  must  keep  a  clear 
mind,  a  quiet  head,  and  an  open  heart. 
That  is  what  the  true  surgeon  has. 
That  is  what  the  soldier  must  have  in 
the  will  to  use  the  bayonet. 

One  can  easily  imagine  a  soldier  with 
true  compassion  offering  a  man  a  drink 
of  water  and  doing  all  he  could  to  help 
him  to  die  with  less  pain  —  when  a 
thrust  of  his  bayonet  had  struck  the 
man  down.  Even  more,  if  it  were  im- 
possible to  stop  because  of  immediate 
use  for  his  bayonet,  one  can  imagine  a 
man  giving  another  thrust  to  kill  the 
other  at  once,  rather  than  to  leave  him 
to  a  lingering  death.  The  man  who, 
seeing  a  German  officer  writhing  on  a 
barbed  wire  fence,  went  forward  and 

133 


released  him  in  the  midst  of  German 
shells,  —  was  probably  a  man  who 
would  have  used  a  bayonet  on  him  and 
on  as  many  others  as  he  could  reach,  and 
used  it  with  great  rapidity,  with  skill, 
and  alertness  when  in  a  bayonet  fight. 
A  man  who  could  use  his  bayonet  with 
the  greatest  skill  would  use  it  always 
with  the  greatest  sense  of  honor.  He 
would,  as  our  friend  said,  "love  to  mow 
down  Germans",  and  when  he  came  out 
of  the  battle,  he  could  heartily  and  with 
a  clear  conscience  pray  for  every  one 
of  their  souls. 

The  first  necessity  is  for  a  soldier  to 
comprehend  the  cause  for  which  he  is 
fighting ;  to  comprehend  it,  to  see  and 
love  the  right  of  it,  to  know  that  he  is 
fighting  for  his  own  deliverance  from 
tyranny  and  the  deliverance  of  his 
nation ;  and  to  love  his  cause  with  his 
whole  heart  is  what  can  arouse  in  the 

134 


THE  WILL  TO  USE  THE  BAYONET 

soldier  the  will  to  use  the  bayonet.  A 
man  may  flatter  himself  in  the  begin- 
ning of  his  training  that  the  timidity 
and  the  pull-backs  which  he  feels  in  his 
attempt  to  thrust  his  bayonet  come  from 
the  kindly  sympathy,  the  human  ten- 
derness of  his  own  nature.  Let  him  be 
undeceived  as  soon  as  possible.  The 
timidity  comes  from  a  lack  of  intelli- 
gence with  regard  to  the  motive  that 
should  be  behind  the  use  of  every  bay- 
onet, and  the  lack  of  unselfish  love  for 
the  right  in  his  nation. 

David  had  the  love  and  the  intelli- 
gence when  with  delicacy,  with  precision, 
and  with  the  confidence  of  a  great  cause 
he  flung  one  of  his  five  smooth  stones 
at  the  head  of  Goliath  and  hit  him  in 
the  one  spot  that  could  have  felled  the 
Philistine  to  the  ground. 

"War  is  hell,"  so  General  Sherman 
said,  but  war  is  hell  only  when  we  let 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

hell  fight  within  us.  War  is  a  rough 
and  stormy  road  to  heaven  when  we 
fight  from  and  for  the  best  within  us, 
when  we  fight  with  all  our  hearts  for 
the  sake  of  peace  —  real  peace. 

It  takes  character  to  be  a  soldier,  and 
if  the  growth  of  skill  and  power  is  not 
developing  his  character  it  is  destroy- 
ing him.  One  can  easily  see  the  truth 
of  that  after  one  quiet,  steady,  com- 
prehensive look.  And  having  seen  the 
truth,  there  is  no  doubt  as  to  the  sort 
of  military  training  most  men  would 
choose.  Every  man  would  love  the 
building  up  of  his  own  soul,  the  en- 
larging of  his  own  heart.  It  is  only 
weakness  and  blindness  that  keep  all 
men  from  working  for  such  constructive 
power.  An  officer  can  do  much  for  his  men 
who  trains  them  from  the  highest  point  of 
view,  and  the  discipline  required  of  such 
an  officer  would  be  of  the  highest  kind. 
136 


CHAPTER  9 

Death  and  Dying 

THERE  is  a  story  in  an  at- 
tractive little  book  called  "The 
Stories  Lizzie  Told",  about  a 
little  boy  who  was  afraid  of  dying. 
The  boy  was  so  afraid  of  "dyin"'  that 
he  used  to  go  out  in  the  fields  and  cry 
with  fear;  at  different  times  his  crying 
was  stopped  and  he  was  comforted, 
first  by  a  flower,  who  whispered  to  him 
that  really  it  was  easy  to  die,  for  you 
knew  well  that  you  would  be  alive  again 
next  spring,  and  then  you  would  find 
the  green  grass  and  the  blue  sky  beauti- 
ful as  ever.  Then  a  caterpillar  told 
him  how  beautiful  it  was  to  die,  because 
you  came  alive  again  with  wings  and 

137 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

could  fly  in  the  air  and  light  on  the 
flowers,  and  you  had  such  a  happy 
time.  The  "little  afraid  boy"  was  com- 
forted by  all  the  pleasant  stories  only 
for  a  little  while,  and  then  the  fear 
would  come  back  again,  and  he  would 
cry  and  suffer  just  as  much,  —  and  be 
so  disappointed  because  the  fear  had  not 
gone.  One  day  he  was  in  the  fields, 
crying  and  sobbing,  when  all  at  once 
he  heard  a  kind  voice  above  him  say, 
"Little  boy,  little  boy,  what  is  the 
matter?"  The  little  boy  looked  up  and 
saw  a  man  with  a  shining  face  looking 
down  on  him.  The  face  was  so  loving 
and  so  fatherly  that  the  little  boy  wanted 
to  pour  out  his  trouble  to  him  at  once, 
and  said  in  the  midst  of  his  tears,  "Oh ! 
oh  !  I  am  so  afraid  of  dyin'."  And  then 
the  kind  man  looked  at  him  steadily, 
and  the  boy  felt  new  life  come  into  him 
from  his  loving  kindness,  and  all  the 
138 


DEATH  AND  DYING 

boy's  fear  seemed  to  go  as  the  man  an- 
swered, and  said,  "Why,  my  little  boy, 
you  are  dead." 

That  story  has  always  seemed  to  me 
to  have  a  deep  and  true  significance. 
For  years  people  thought  that  when  we 
die,  we  go  up  and  off  somewhere  beyond 
the  sky.  I  remember  a  friend  quite 
soberly  and  sincerely  looking  up  into 
the  blue  sky  and  saying  to  me  with  a 
bright  and  wholesome  smile,  "Don't  you 
wish  you  knew  what  was  beyond  there  ?" 
We  had  been  talking  of  death,  and  it 
was  plain  from  what  she  had  previously 
said  that  "beyond"  the  sky  meant  to 
her  that  is  where  we  go  when  we  die. 
I  remember  that  another  woman  said 
that  her  soul  was  blue,  like  a  blue  light, 
and  would  ooze  out  of  the  top  of  her 
head  when  she  died.  It  seems  strange, 
very  strange,  when  we  all  know  per- 
fectly well  that  we  must  die,  that  many 
139 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

of  us  do  have  no  thought  at  all  about  it, 
and  many  more  have  only  extreme  and 
ridiculous  ideas,  and  all  such  ideas  are 
especially  undefined  and  without  spir- 
itual common  sense. 

After  all,  spiritual  common  sense  is 
at  the  root  of  all  natural  common  sense. 
The  one  can  never  be  really  well-founded 
without  the  other.  Then  why  is  it  not 
perfectly  possible,  why  not  even  very 
evident, -- that  the  other  world,  the 
world  of  our  souls,  is  here  and  now? 
This  outside  world  is  in  time  and  space. 
The  inside  world  is  not  in  time  and  space. 
It  is  here  and  now,  and  whether  here  is 
China,  England,  France,  Massachusetts, 
or  the  planet  Mars.  It  is  now,  whether 
now  is  to-day,  yesterday,  or  five  hundred 
years  ago,  or  a  thousand  years  hence. 

You  see,  we  are  so  in  the  habit  of 
thinking  in  time  and  space  that  very 
few  of  us  ever  consider  at  all  the  pos- 
140 


DEATH  AND   DYING 

sibility  of  thinking  out  of  it.  That  is 
a  power  within  us  which  it  seems  must 
be  almost  atrophied  for  want  of  use. 
Many  people,  very  many,  would  not 
even  feel  interested  to  consider  its  pos- 
sibility. And  yet,  —  let  us  think  now 
for  a  minute,  —  have  you  not  been  sitting 
next  to  a  man  in  the  same  room,  and  con- 
versing, and  felt  strongly  so  far  away 
from  him  that  he  might  as  well  be  at 
one  end  of  the  earth  and  you  at  the 
other?  Have  you  never  thought  of  a 
near  and  dear  friend  who  was  a  long 
way  off  in  space,  and  felt  him,  never- 
theless, to  be  so  near  that  you  could  have 
taken  hold  of  his  hand?  What  does 
that  prove  ?  Does  it  not  prove  that 
it  is  the  soul  of  the  man  we  are  near  to 
or  far  from  ?  In  the  case  of  feeling  at  a 
great  distance  while  to  all  appearance 
in  the  same  room,  the  space  between 
the  souls  was  very  great  —  so  great  that 
141 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

there  could  be  no  possible  way  of  com- 
municating. In  the  case  of  feeling  near, 
although  our  friend  was  at  the  other 
side  of  the  earth,  outside  space  was 
annihilated,  because  of  there  being  com- 
paratively no  inside  distance  between 
the  friends. 

Outside   space   is   fixed   and   dead   in 
itself.     Inside  space  is  volatile  and  alive. 

If  one  considers  that  question  care- 
fully, throwing  away  personal  or  in- 
herited prejudices,  it  appeals  strongly  to 
the  rational  mind.  And  if  we  listen  to 
such  appeal  and  let  it  guide  us,  we  soon 
come  to  appreciate  heartily  that  it  can 
be  —  nay,  indeed,  it  must  be  true  that 
at  the  death  of  the  body  we  simply  go 
inside.  That  is  where  the  little  boy  was 
when  he  looked  up  and  saw  the  strong, 
shining  face  of  the  man,  and  heard  his 
quiet,  loving  voice  telling  him,  "Why, 
little  boy,  you  are  dead !" 
142 


DEATH  AND  DYING 

That  is  what  our  Lord  meant  when  he 
said,  :'Ye  cannot  say  lo  here  and  lo 
there,  for  behold  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
is  within  you."  What  else  could  he 
have  meant  ? 

The  trouble  is,  our  finer  and  interior 
perceptions  are  so  befogged  by  the  dust 
of  this  world,  its  selfish  interests,  its 
selfish  anxieties,  its  selfish  speculations, 
that  we  cannot  possibly  see  clearly 
enough  to  understand  inside  things  nor 
even  to  perceive  them.  Why,  how  many 
people  are  there  who  keep  quiet,  really 
quiet,  without  and  within,  for  one  hour 
every  day?  When  people  have  formed 
no  habit  of  inside  quiet  at  all,  how  can 
they  by  any  possibility  expect  to  get 
an  inside  perspective?  How  can  they 
get  in  the  very  slightest  touch  with  the 
inside?  Why,  such  people  are  never 
really  quiet  when  they  sleep. 

I  said  above  that  it  seemed  strange 

143 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

that  when  we  all  know  we  must  die, 
we  seem,  most  of  us,  to  consider  dying 
so  little.  But  is  it  any  more  strange 
than  the  fact  that  when  we  all  know 
that  selfishness  is  the  most  destructive 
element  in  the  world,  we  do  not  habitu- 
ally realize  its  poisonous  power  and  shun 
it  in  consequence?  Inside  selfishness  is 
more  subtle  and  more  poisonous,  and  yet 
few  have  any  sense  of  their  interior  self- 
seeking  because  they  have  not  even 
ceased  to  be  selfish  outside.  Strange, 
isn't  it,  that  we  would  be  frightened  and 
seek  no  end  of  physicians  and  cures  if 
we  discovered  our  physical  systems  to 
be  full  of  poison,  and  yet  so  many  of 
us  go  about  with  rank  poison  in  our 
spiritual  systems,  and  at  times  really 
enjoy  it ! 

There  is  just  the  point  I  most  care  to 
make  with  regard  to  death  and  dying. 
If  "ye  cannot  say  lo  here  or  lo  there, 
144 


DEATH  AND  DYING 

for  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  within 
you",  how  can  any  one  get  really  sen- 
sitive to  that  Kingdom  of  Heaven  when 
he  is  not  sensitive  to  the  dust  and  fog 
of  selfish  desires  within  himself  that 
exist  so  entirely  between  him  and  heaven  ? 
If  such  dust  and  fog  and  selfish,  material 
way  of  living  make  it  impossible  for  a 
man  to  be  sensitive  to  the  world  of  spirits 
about  us,  much  more  would  selfishness 
dull  his  sensitiveness  to  Heaven  itself. 

If  we  want  to  sense  the  inside,  we  must 
live  unselfishly  from  the  inside.  No  one 
ever  found  real  spiritual  intelligence  by 
speculating  intellectually  about  the  other 
world.  Sometimes  I  wonder  if  the  So- 
ciety for  Psychical  Research,  with  all  its 
many  discoveries,  has  done  anything  to 
open  the  reality  of  the  other  world  to  the 
people  in  this  one.  Certainly  it  seems 
as  if  it  had  done  only  harm,  when  you 
hear  a  man  without  delicacy  and  without 

145 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

reverence  discussing  the  life  after  death. 
Fortunately,  there  are  some  in  this 
Society  who  have  both  delicacy  and 
reverence. 

Many  men  have  discussed  spiritual 
questions  intellectually.  Many  men  are 
glib  in  expressing  their  belief  that  there 
is  a  life  after  death,  and  give  clear  and 
well-considered  reasons  why.  When  you 
hear  such  men  talking  wisely,  and  what 
they  say  is  often  very  wise,  they  make  the 
truth  evident ;  but,  when  you  hear  them 
talking  with  wisdom  from  their  heads, 
and  know  that  in  their  hearts  and  their 
lives  they  are  thoughtless  of  others,  and 
self-indulgent  themselves,  you  see  clearly 
that  when  they  come  into  the  world 
where  "by  their  fruits  ye  shall  know 
them",  they  will  probably  have  to  lose 
their  apparent  wisdom  and  be  taught 
again  before  in  their  spirits  they  grow  to 
be  wise  men  —  ready  for  their  eternal  use. 
146 


DEATH  AND  DYING 

An  highly  intellectual  man  may  be 
an  idiot  with  regard  to  his  soul. 

To  consider  death,  to  understand  death, 
to  have  any  perception  of  the  beauty  and 
power  of  so-called  death,  we  must  go 
deeper  into  life.  There  is  no  death 
really  but  the  death  of  self,  and  the  death 
of  self  we  all  ought  to  be  working  for. 
As  the  self  is  destroyed,  God  builds  our 
souls.  "Except  a  corn  of  wheat  fall 
into  the  ground  and  die,  it  produceth 
no  fruit,  but  if  it  die,  it  produces  much 
fruit." 

Just  think  how  selfish  we  are  with 
regard  to  death  when  a  near  and  dear 
friend  goes  before  us.  If  the  friend 
were  going  to  an  interesting  foreign 
country,  even  though  we  might  miss 
him  sadly,  we  would  think  of  his  side  of 
the  change,  and  although  we  had  never 
seen  the  country  to  which  he  was  going, 
we  would  be  alive  with  interest  for  his 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

sake.  But-,  you  say,  in  that  case  we 
would  receive  letters.  Yes,  I  know  that 
is  to  be  thought  of.  But  how  do  we 
know  but  that  if  we  had  the  same  un- 
selfish interest  in  our  friend's  experiences 
if  he  left  us  because  his  body  died,  that 
then  we  might  not  have  messages  from 
him,  messages  that  could  and  would  be 
more  helpful  to  us  in  our  work  here  than 
any  letters  that  could  come  from  any 
earthly  land  ?  To  get  such  messages, 
we  must  learn  to  be  quiet,  trustful,  and 
unselfish.  Otherwise  we  could  not  be 
sure  that  we  heard  them  clearly. 

I  know  a  woman  who  lost  a  very  dear 
relative,  one  who  had  some  outside  ways 
and  habits  that  often  troubled  my  friend 
very  much,  but  whose  interior  instinct 
was  and  always  had  been  positively  use- 
ful to  her.  After  the  relative  had  died 
and  those  external  habits  were  out  of 
sight  and  presumably  left  with  the  body, 
148 


DEATH  AND   DYING 

my  friend  felt  so  strongly  and  so  con- 
tinuously the  help  from  the  interior 
nearness  that  she  said  that  if  she  had 
never  believed  in  immortality  before, 
this  would  have  compelled  her  belief 
in  another  life,  and  it  would  have  com- 
pelled it  very  happily,  for  every  sugges- 
tion from  inside  that  came  to  her,  as 
she  obeyed,  she  found  not  only  to  be 
practically  useful,  but  enlarging  to  her 
ideas  of  how  best  to  serve. 

It  is  so  easy  to  see,  —  if  we  will  only 
look,  —  how  selfish  it  is  to  grieve  and 
to  think  only  of  our  own  loss  when, 
as  in  the  case  of  my  friend,  the  loss 
may  be  really  no  loss  at  all,  but  only  a 
gain.  Selfish  grieving  clogs  the  way  in 
us  so  that  we  could  not  possibly  get  a 
suggestion  from  within. 

Suppose  that  there  can  be  communica- 
tion with  those  in  the  other  world ;  sup- 
pose that  they  who  are  there  can  know 
149 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

something  of  us  who  are  here.  Can't 
you  imagine  their  possible  distress  when, 
because  of  their  new  inside  light  they 
have  so  much  to  give  us,  they  see  us 
plunged  in  our  own  selfish  grief  and 
because  of  that  turning  away  from  them  ? 
Just  think  of  the  possible  disappoint- 
ment to  one  on  the  inside  when  the 
friend  who  is  left  outside  grieves  and 
grieves  and  will  not  listen. 

To  keep  quiet  and  listen  and  do  our 
duty.  That  is  the  first  need  of  all  who 
wake  up  to  the  fact  of  having  indulged 
selfish  grief.  Indeed,  grief  for  the  loss 
of  another  by  the  death  of  the  body  can 
teach  us  to  keep  quiet  and  listen  and  to 
do  our  work  in  the  world  from  that 
listening  attitude.  And  such  an  atti- 
tude of  mind  and  heart  will  bring  us  light 
and  strength  to  do  our  work  better.  If 
we  listen  first  to  God, --by  trusting 
His  love  and  obeying  His  command- 
150 


DEATH  AND  DYING 

ments,  —  that  will  give  us  power  to 
listen  to  the  best  in  others,  whether  they 
are  in  this  world  or  the  next,  and  to 
act  upon  the  messages  we  get.  So  shall 
we  learn  to  live  in  causes,  and  not  in 
effects,  except  as  seen  and  understood 
from  causes,  and  the  Kingdom  of  Causes 
is  that  way  within  us  which  may 
lead  to  heaven  or  to  hell.  The  King- 
dom of  Causes  is  the  spiritual  world. 


CHAPTER  10 

Courage 

THERE  is  a  man  away  back  some- 
where in  history,  who  is  reported 
as  trembling  with  fear  as  his 
servants  were  fastening  on  his  armor. 
When  his  friends,  seeing  the  fear  in  his 
body  and  the  expression  of  his  face, 
sympathized  with  him,  and  protested 
against  his  going  into  the  thick  of  the 
fight  when  such  fear  was  upon  him,  the 
warrior  responded  with  firmness  and 
dignity  that  if  his  body  knew  where  he 
was  to  take  it  that  day  it  would  quake 
with  fear  so  that  he  could  hardly  carry 
it.  I  am  corry  not  to  remember  the 
exact  words,  for  the  dignity  and  beauty 
of  them  impressed  me  deeply.  This 

152 


COURAGE 

man  knew  as  by  a  finer  instinct  the  shal- 
lowness  of  mere  physical  fear,  and  he 
could  have  known,  —  probably  did 
know,  —  the  shallowness  of  mere  physi- 
cal courage. 

Physical  courage  may  take  a  man  with 
what  seems  marvellous  power  through 
dangerous  places  —  and  take  him  through 
successfully.  But  physical  courage,  when 
it  is  only  physical,  cannot  be  trusted  to 
infallible  stability ;  it  may  be  pricked 
suddenly,  and  in  unexpected  places,  and 
then  its  counterpart  is  a  dogged  dullness 
or  a  quaking  fear. 

Physical  courage  must  have  its  founda- 
tion in  the  spirit  and  must  receive  its 
life  from  the  spirit  to  grow  in  power  and 
in  absolute  trustworthiness. 

A  man  who  has  true  moral  courage 
can  always  cultivate  physical  courage 
with  practice  and  experience.  A  man 
who  has  physical  courage  and  no  moral 

153 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

courage  may  shrink  in  a  panic  of  fear 
from  some  totally  unexpected  cause. 
Of  course  there  are  men,  and  many  of 
them,  with  only  physical  courage,  whose 
comrades  have  never  seen  them  fail, 
and  they  may  be  cited  to  prove  that 
my  statement  is  not  true.  But  these 
men  have  never  had  their  physical 
courage  pricked;  and,  that  being  so,  it 
will  be  seen  by  others  who  are  keenly 
observant  that  years  of  such  physical 
courage  have  dulled  the  sensibilities 
rather  than  sharpened  them;  whereas 
years  of  practice  in  physical  courage, 
backed  by  the  courage  of  the  spirit, 
make  a  man  keener  and  keener  with 
regard  to  his  fellow  men,  both  in  his 
power  to  aid  them  when  it  is  his  privi- 
lege to  aid,  and  in  his  power  to  conquer 
where  it  is  his  duty  to  conquer.  All 
true  courage  should  be  combined  with 
clearness  of  mind.  Physical  courage 

154 


COURAGE 

alone  has  no  such  strength  of  combina- 
tion. Often  physical  courage  develops 
into  merely  bravado,  and  bravado  is 
contemptible. 

I  have  known  men  and  women,  too, 
with  nervous  fears,  who  had  trumped  up 
a  false  courage  with  which  to  conquer 
them,  and  had  forced  themselves  to  do 
over  and  over  what  they  most  feared, 
thinking  that  such  forcing  would  con- 
quer the  fear.  Such  men  and  women 
are  often  to  be  admired ;  they  do  not 
know  that  they  are  cultivating  false 
courage  which  is  worse  than  no  courage 
at  all,  and  they  force  themselves  through 
terrors  of  suffering  and  the  keenest  pain 
to  do  what  they  really  think  is  right.  In 
doing  this,  they  are  only  adding  to  the 
strain  of  the  fear  and  pressing  the  im- 
pression of  the  fear  more  deeply  into 
their  brains.  They  are  also  opening 
themselves  to  the  chance  of  the  deepest 

155 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

discouragement,  because,  after  all  their 
efforts  and  suffering,  they  find  that  they 
grow  worse  in  their  fears  and  not  better. 
How  clearly  evident  it  seems,  when  we 
face  it  thoughtfully,  that  it  is  a  fact, 
humanly  speaking,  that  we  must  drop 
the  physical  strain,  the  physical  tension 
of  fear,  if  we  want  to  find  the  courage 
behind  it.  If  men  could  face  that  fact 
and  act  upon  it  with  real  force  of  will, 
not  only  would  a  large  amount  of  entirely 
unnecessary  suffering  be  saved,  but  the 
nerves,  through  having  been  intelligently 
compelled  to  drop  the  strain  of  the  fear, 
would  be  opened  and  invigorated  by 
the  rush  of  courageous  action  which 
would  fill  them.  I  have  seen  these  facts 
proved  in  actual  experience.  Often  yield- 
ing or  relaxing  from  the  strain  of  fear  is 
done  almost  instantaneously,  and  quite 
unconsciously  through  the  pressure  of 
the  courageous  spirit  behind.  Then  the 
156 


COURAGE 

nerves  are  at  once  expanded,  and  the  man 
does  his  best  work.  But,  with  many 
of  the  best  fighters,  the  night  before,  or 
days  before,  is  where  the  trouble  comes ; 
and,  if  at  that  time  a  man  could  know, 
first,  that  it  takes  more  will  to  relax 
from  strain  of  fear  than  it  does  to  fight 
when  the  time  comes;  secondly,  that  if 
he  uses  his  will  prayerfully  to  relax  from 
the  strain  of  fear  when  it  attacks  him, 
the  night  before  or  days  before,  both  the 
prayer  and  the  new  strength  of  will 
gained  from  the  yielding  will  be  with 
him  and  will  sharpen  and  strengthen  his 
best  powers  in  time  of  stress.  If  a 
man  could  know  all  this,  and  from  con- 
viction act  upon  it,  it  could  and  would 
mean  wonders  to  him  and  to  those 
about  him. 

As  for  homesickness,  from  which  many 
soldiers  suffer  keenly,  as  a  man  under- 
stands  how   and  why   he    should    drop 
157 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

the  strain  caused  by  it,  the  relief  of 
having  accomplished  that  through  in- 
telligent yielding  will  bring  him  nearer 
to  a  sense  of  home  than  he  otherwise 
would  have  been. 

And  all  of  us  at  home  need  courage, 
just  as  much  as  the  soldiers.  We  should 
not  only  be  truly  courageous  in  our 
work  here,  but  should  do  our  utmost  to 
transmit  such  courage  with  real  cheer- 
fulness in  letters  and  messages  sent  to 
our  soldiers.  It  has  been  reported  that 
men  at  the  front  have  many  times  had  the 
courage  and  even  the  strength,  taken  out 
of  them,  through  grief -stricken,  pitying 
letters  from  home.  Such  things  should 
be  impossible,  and  so  they  would  be,  if 
mothers  and  relatives  and  friends  went 
fully  in  their  hearts  with  their  boys,  and 
with  the  great  cause  for  which  they 
are  fighting. 

One  can  hardly  believe  that  at  this 
158 


COURAGE 

late  day  when  the  nation  has  gathered 
itself  together  for  its  best  work,  we 
could  hear  from  any  source  whatever 
such  an  exclamation  as:  "Oh,  don't 
mention  this  terrible  war  to  me  again. 
I  can't  bear  to  think  of  it.  Let's  talk 
of  something  pleasant."  But  one  does 
hear  it,  and  there  should  be,  it  seems  to 
me,  a  special  internment  camp  for  such 
human  jellyfish.  They  should  be  forced 
to  study  maps  of  the  Eastern  and  Western 
battlefields,  and  prick  out  on  them  every 
advance  and  retreat.  Lord  Bryce's  re- 
port on  atrocities  should  be  read  aloud 
to  them  at  intervals.  Pictures  of  Rheims 
and  Soissons  and  Laon  should  be  flashed 
on  screens  for  their  benefit,  until,  in 
the  contemplation  of  bigger  things,  they 
forget  the  pitiful  littleness  of  their  own 
sensibilities. 

For,  in  the  first  place,  this  is  not  a 
terrible  war.     Terrible  things,  —  ghastly, 

159 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

unbelievable  things,  —  have  happened  in 
the  course  of  it.  But  the  war  itself  is 
glorious,  sacred,  the  greatest  in  magni- 
tude of  all  conflicts ;  it  is  also  one  of  the 
highest  in  purpose,  one  of  the  worthiest  of 
achievements,  because  it  is  being  fought 
for  human  rights,  as  embodied  first  in  the 
rights  of  the  little  nations,  —  Belgium, 
Poland,  Roumania,  Serbia,  —  as  em- 
bodied also  in  the  rights  of  the  indi- 
vidual of  every  nation.  The  thought 
of  defeat,  and  that  alone,  can  be  in  any 
way  terrible.  Let  us,  therefore,  put 
that  thought  out  of  our  minds,  and  in- 
stead look  for  uses  to  which  we  may 
put  our  heads  and  hands,  consecrating 
our  hearts  to  a  high,  bright  courage. 
Of  true  courage  this  war  is  an  admi- 
rable test.  There  is  something  solid  and 
reassuring  in  that,  and  no  one  of  us  but 
is  glad  of  a  big  test  for  a  worthy  cause.  I 
once  knew  a  student  in  a  great  Law  School, 
1 60 


COURAGE 

who  was  preparing  for  his  final  exami- 
nations. Two  days  before  the  time  set, 
as  he  was  working  night  and  day,  an 
ulcerated  tooth  took  him  for  a  victim. 
He  simply  refused  to  be  victimized.  He 
took  a  happy  pleasure  in  ignoring  that 
tooth.  I  saw  him  the  night  before  the 
examination.  His  face  was  swollen  ri- 
diculously, almost  beyond  recognition. 
But  when  he  smiled  he  did  not  look 
ridiculous  at  all.  "They  tried  to  get 
me,"  he  said,  "but  Til  show  'em.9' 

But  the  healthy  joy  of  a  fair  fight  for 
a  worthy  cause  is  not  the  only  good 
thing  in  this  war's  supreme  test  of 
courage.  Another  is  the  fact  that  it 
is  for  all  of  us,  universal. 

Sum  up  your  hardships  and  then  com- 
pare them  with  your  neighbor's.  Com- 
pare them  with  this  man's,  for  instance. 
The  mortgage  on  his  home  was  fore- 
closed while  he  was  overseas,  and  his 
161 


NERVES  AND   THE   WAR 

wife  and  child  turned  into  the  street. 
Then  his  legs  were  shot  away  in  a  charge, 
and  the  rest  of  him  was  left  in  a  shell 
hole,  to  bleed  to  death,  perhaps,  or  per- 
haps be  miraculously  saved,  but  in  any 
event  crippled  and  unable  to  support 
his  family.  Compare  your  troubles  with 
those  of  thousands  of  others.  The  young 
wife  who  loses  her  husband ;  the  mother 
who  loses  her  only  son ;  the  girl  whose 
brother  is  a  prisoner,  whose  letters  have 
stopped  coming.  For  you,  my  friend, 
it  is  infinitely  hard,  but  for  others  it  is 
infinitely  hard  also.  Look  about  you 
and  see  how  they  are  bearing  the  pain. 
Then  smile,  trust  God,  and  go  on  with 
your  job. 

Courage,  then,  boils  down  to  the  task 
of  forgetting  one's  self.  Whether  one 
is  over  there,  fighting,  or  over  here, 
waiting  —  that  is  the  main  thing.  Do 
you  know  what  makes  the  British  so 
,162 


COURAGE 

courageous?  It  is  their  sweet  sense  of 
humor.  We  in  this  country  are  accus- 
tomed to  say  that  the  British  have  no 
sense  of  humor.  We  are  wrong.  We 
mean  they  have  no  sense  of  farce,  which 
is  often  mistaken  for  humor.  The  Brit- 
ish are  supreme  in  humor  --  the  force 
which  makes  you  smile,  inside.  An  Eng- 
lishman can  sit  through  hours  of  bom- 
bardment, up  to  his  knees  in  icy  mud, 
and  still  confide  to  his  neighbor,  "What 
a  slow  place  Flanders  would  be,  if  it 
weren't  for  the  Germans." 

Forgetting  himself  in  extreme  stress 
comes  easily  to  the  Englishman  and  to 
the  French.  The  British  will  stand  days 
of  punishment  of  the  hardest,  most 
nerve-wracking  kind,  and  hold  their  line 
firm  as  a  rock.  The  French  can  do  the 
same ;  and,  when  the  enemy  is  tired  of 
getting  worn  down  with  machine  guns 
and  rifle  fire,  when  his  eternal  waves 
163 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

have  ceased  through  sheer  exhaustion 
and  his  guns  at  last  are  silent,  secure 
in  the  consciousness  that  the  French, 
though  still  firm,  are  defeated  —  then 
those  Frenchmen,  with  hours  of  torture 
behind  them,  will  wink  at  one  another 
and  promptly  start  an  offensive  of  their 
own.  The  courage  of  the  French  is 
inexplicable.  There  is  a  powerful  some- 
thing, an  inner  fire,  if  you  like,  which 
simply  lifts  their  spirits  out  of  their 
bodies  and  drives  them  on  in  the  service 
of  the  Republic.  I  think  as  a  nation 
they  are  the  bravest  men  in  the  world. 

Now  we  Americans  have  some  of  the 
splendid  qualities  of  both  British  and 
French.  We  have  a  sense  of  humor, 
I  think;  and  we  have  genuine  emotion. 
But  we  are  oppressed  with  a  heavy  selfish- 
ness. It  is  that  which  we  must  conquer. 
We  must  study  ourselves  impersonally, 
for  the  sake  of  a  greater  use.  We 
164 


COURAGE 

must  conserve  our  nervous  energy  when 
we  can,  for  the  sake  of  exerting  a  higher 
concentration  of  our  forces  when  the 
time  is  ripe.  We  must  conquer  the  begin- 
nings of  self-pity;  we  must  keep  our 
bodies  and  minds  clean  and  true;  we 
must  let  the  strain  of  our  experiences 
go  through  us  and  out  of  us ;  we  must 
will  to  obey  the  laws  of  God,  to  find 
strength  in  obedience ;  we  must,  above 
all  things,  remember  that  it  is  the  Other 
Man  who  counts.  It  is  for  him  that  we  are 
fighting,  and  for  him  that  we  must  sacri- 
fice, bravely,  to  the  end.  For,  through 
sacrifice,  God  willing,  may  come — victory. 
I  commend  to  you  the  picture  of  a 
handful  of  Americans  on  the  march  up 
to  the  first  line,  who  picked  wild  flowers 
growing  by  the  roadside  and  stuck  them 
in  their  helmets ;  and  so,  uplifted  by  an 
eager  sense  of  duty,  the  divine  sense  of  high 
adventure,  stepped  gaily,  gladly  into  battle. 
165 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

St.  Christopher  wanted  to  serve  a 
man  who  had  no  fear.  He  served  for 
some  time  a  great  king  whom  he  heartily 
admired.  But  he  discovered  that  the 
king  was  afraid  of  the  devil ;  and  so 
St.  Christopher  went  until  he  found  the 
devil,  and  engaged  himself  in  his  service. 
St.  Christopher  was  rushing  with  the 
devil,  whose  cleverness  and  power  for 
evil  he  had  observed  keenly,  against  his 
enemies,  when  a  leader  in  the  op- 
posite army  simply  stood  still  and  held 
up  the  hilt  of  his  sword,  which  was  in  the 
form  of  a  cross.  The  devil  and  all  his 
hosts  shrank,  trembled  with  terror,  and 
became  powerless.  St.  Christopher  saw 
their  fear  and  left  them  at  once.  He 
wanted  to  serve  the  man  who  had  held 
up  his  sword  —  the  man  who  had  made 
the  devil  tremble  with  fear.  But  the 
man  had  disappeared,  and  St.  Christopher 
started  in  search  of  him.  While  he  was 
1 66 


COURAGE 

searching  St.  Christopher  came  to  a 
strong  torrent  across  which  passengers 
needed  to  be  ferried.  Having  the 
strength  to  carry  them  across  on  his 
back,  he  stopped  for  a  while  to  attend 
to  this  new  occupation.  He  crossed  once 
at  the  call  of  a  little  child  and  lifted  him 
on  to  his  back,  but  as  they  went  over  the 
stream,  the  child  grew  so  heavy  that 
Christopher,  astonished  at  his  burden, 
could  hardly  stand ;  he  managed,  however, 
to  stem  the  tide  and  totter  to  the  opposite 
bank,  and  when  he  put  the  child  on  the 
ground  —  he  saw  a  great  light,  and  there 
stood  the  Lord  —  the  Lord,  who  showed 
Christopher  plainly  that  to  all  those  who 
were  heart  and  soul  in  His  service,  there 
was  no  such  thing  as  fear.  So  Christo- 
pher found  his  quest  and  entered  into 
his  eternal  service. 

Unselfishness  is  that  which  gives  to  cour- 
age both  its  sure  foundation  and  endurance. 
167 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD 
HEALTH 


The  Heart  of  Good  Health1 

THERE  is  a  training  of  the  hu- 
man body  so  perfectly  corre- 
sponding to  the  progress  of  the 
soul  in  its  regeneration,  that,  as  we  study 
it,  the  impression  comes  to  us  more  and 
more  clearly  that  all  who  are  interested 
in  the  relation  of  the  soul  and  the  body 
should  not  only  be  familiar  with  this 
physical  training,  but  should  so  fulfil  its 
requirements  that,  while  following  the 
paths  of  spiritual  truth,  the  way  lead- 
ing back  to  an  orderly,  natural  state  of 
the  body  may  be  made  more  clear. 
This  training  for  the  body,  which  is  to 
be  described  later,  is  not  in  the  slightest 

1  Copyright,  1907,  by  Little,  Brown,  and  Company. 
171 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

degree  artificial.  It  is  not  an  acquisition, 
in  the  strict  sense  of  that  word,  any 
more  than  the  spiritual  power  which 
comes  from  shunning  evils  as  sins  is  an 
acquisition  of  our  own.  As  the  gaining 
of  spiritual  strength  comes  through  the 
full  realization  that  we  cannot  progress 
in  our  regeneration  through  any  selfish 
effort,  that  the  first  necessity  for 
spiritual  growth  is  the  dropping  of  self 
and  selfish  desires,  so  in  this  physical 
work  the  first  object  is  an  absolute 
letting  go  of  all  unnecessary  tension  - 
all  tension  that  has  been  impressed 
upon  the  muscles  through  an  excess  of 
effort  in  our  daily  lives,  through  a  feel- 
ing of  responsibility  which  is  officious 
and  presumptuous,  although  often  it  is 
purely  unconscious ;  tension  that  comes 
through  hereditary  habit,  througli 
needless  anxiety,  and  through  causes 
innumerable,  but,  hard  as  it  is  to  say 
172 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

so,  and  harder  still  to  acknowledge, 
which  are  all  selfish  in  one  way  or 
another. 

The  first  thought  that  comes  to  us  is, 
then,  "Remove  the  cause  in  the  mind, 
and  that  which  is  merely  the  effect  — 
muscular  tension  and  nervous  strain  — 
will  disappear."  So  it  will,  eventually, 
but  not  by  any  means  so  quickly  or  so 
easily  as  when  the  effect  is  studied  with 
the  cause,  or  even,  in  some  cases,  as 
when  the  effect  is  first  studied  alone,  and 
the  mind  led  gradually  from  that  to 
the  cause.  Sometimes  it  works  one 
way  and  sometimes  another,  with  dif- 
ferent individuals  according  to  their 
states.  But  that  greater  help  has  come 
from  working  on  the  spiritual  cause  and 
natural  effect,  either  simultaneously  or 
successively,  has  been  proved  too  many 
times  to  be  denied.  Whether  the  pupil 
is  first  trained  in  causes  or  in  effects,  the 
173 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

heart  and  mind  of  the  teacher  should 
always  work  primarily  in  causes. 

How  many  trusting,  patient  souls  do 
we  see  with  the  muscles  of  the  forehead 
strained  so  that  their  eyebrows  never 
fall  to  a  normal  height?  They  believe 
themselves  to  be  trustful,  perhaps  even 
at  rest.  Help  them  to  become  conscious 
of  these  strained  muscles,  to  become 
sensitive  to  the  unnecessary  physical 
tension,  and,  as  they  learn  to  drop  it, 
they  should  invariably  be  led  to  consider 
the  selfish  spiritual  tension  which  is  the 
cause,  and  new  light  may  be  perceived 
and  new  and  deeper  rest  found. 

The  Divine  in  us  flows  into  external 
forms,  and,  through  them,  leads  us  to 
an  internal  light  from  which  our  lives 
are  renewed.  So  the  external  evidences 
of  the  misapplication  and  misuse  of  our 
own  wonderful  machine,  as  we  see  them 
clearly  and  overcome  them,  lead  us  into 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

new  acknowledgments  of  the  spiritual 
causes  and  a  new  sense  of  the  absolute- 
ness of  the  Divine  power.  There  is  so 
much  that  might  be  said,  showing  the 
necessity  for  this  training,  there  are  so 
many  examples  that  might  be  given  in 
proof  of  the  good  it  can  and  has  already 
accomplished,  that  it  would  be  difficult 
to  tell  where  to  stop ;  but,  above  all,  I 
desire  to  make  evident  its  perfect  prac- 
ticability. There  is  too  much  mysti- 
cism, there  are  too  many  lofty  expres- 
sions of  truth,  but  too  little  natural  use 
of  it.  And,  while  from  any  natural 
basis  we  might  rise  to  spiritual  truths 
that  would  amaze  us  in  their  power 
and  beauty,  they  would  be  lost  to  sight 
entirely  or  would  topple  over  and  come 
to  nothing  if  not  started  from  a  broad 
and  firm  foundation  of  real  love  of  use. 

Perhaps  it  will  be  best  to  give  first  as 
concisely   as   possible   a  general  idea  of 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

the  physical  training  alone.  To  many 
who  follow  it  the  spiritual  counterpart 
will  be  quite  evident,  as,  step  by  step, 
the  natural  process  is  described. 

Francois  Delsarte  was  the  originator 
or  discoverer  of  the  training;  but,  al- 
though he  seemed  to  have  in  many 
ways  a  wonderful  instinct,  he  branched 
off  into  motions  and  attitudes  supposed 
to  be  helpful  to  the  development  of  ex- 
pression, but  so  utterly  artificial,  such 
sham  work  from  beginning  to  end,  and 
so  disastrous  in  their  results,  that  it  is 
difficult  to  understand  how  the  same 
man  could  express  at  one  and  the  same 
time  such  absolute  falsity  and  such 
helpful  truth. 

All  the  good  in  Delsarte  can  also  be 
found  in  the  writings  of  Swedenborg, 
and  so  much  more  besides,  that  it  is  to 
Swedenborg  one  naturally  turns  in  grat- 
itude. Many  ancient  and  modern 
176 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

philosophers  have  written  most  helpfully 
on  this  subject,  but  none  with  the  same 
fulness  as  Swedenborg. 

Swedenborg  says,  "The  interior  things 
of  the  mind  are  in  no  power  except 
through  the  forces  of  the  body,  and 
these  forces  are  not  in  power  except 
through  the  action  of  the  body  itself." 
And  again,  "In  order  that  all  things  of 
the  body  may  preserve  their  formation, 
and  thus  be  permanent  in  their  functions, 
man  requires  to  be  nourished  and  to  be 
continually  renewed." 

Now  man  is  nourished  and  renewed 
physically  with  food,  with  fresh  air,  and 
with  rest.  If  our  bodies  are  habitually 
contracted,  they  will  not  get  their  full 
amount  of  nourishment  from  either  of 
these  three  sources. 

Some  scientists,  in  studying  the  pro- 
cess of  digestion,  put  a  bit  of  metal  into 
the  food  which  they  gave  a  dog  and 
177 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

then  applied  the  X-ray  so  that  they 
might  see  the  progress  of  the  metal 
through  the  stomach.  It  started  all 
right,  according  to  the  well-known  pro- 
cess of  digestion,  and  then  some  one 
startled  the  dog  and  made  him  angry ; 
immediately  the  metal  ball  was  seen  to 
stop  still.  When  they  quieted  the  dog 
and  soothed  him,  the  metal  was  seen  to 
start  again  in  the  regular  process  of 
digestion.  This  experiment  was  re- 
peated several  times.  Every  time  the 
dog's  nerves  or  muscles  became  con- 
tracted from  fright  or  anger,  or  from 
any  form  of  excitement,  the  ball  stopped. 
When  the  dog  became  quiet  and  com- 
fortable, the  process  of  digestion  went 
on  normally.  This  experiment  proved 
conclusively  the  effect  of  superfluous 
contractions  upon  the  nourishing  of  the 
body.  How  can  a  body  be  whole- 
somely nourished  when  digestion  is 
178 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

constantly  interrupted?  And,  if  the  in- 
terruption caused  by  a  momentary  strain 
is  so  decided,  the  interference  must  be 
constant  when  a  man  is  in  a  state  of 
habitual  excitement,  and  his  stomach 
therefore  habitually  contracted.  The 
stomach  and  all  the  digestive  organs 
have  to  push  through  with  their  work 
as  best  they  can,  but  the  effect  of  the 
strain  is  sure  to  appear  somewhere,  for 
to  do  this  work  with  such  a  handicap 
the  stomach  must  rob  the  brain  of 
power  that  ought  to  have  been  used 
elsewhere.  When  the  dog  was  soothed, 
the  digestive  process  went  on  as  if  it  had 
not  been  interrupted,  which  suggests 
how  steadily  nature's  laws  are  working 
to  serve  us  if  we  will  only  give  them 
even  the  least  opportunity.  Nature  will 
do  nine  tenths  of  the  work  for  us  if  we 
will  only  be  thorough  and  persistent  in 
doing  our  own  small  share.  But  we  ap- 
179 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

pear  to  have  neglected  the  great  physical 
laws  as  completely  as  it  is  possible  to 
do  without  actually  putting  an  end  to 
our  lives,  and  then  we  complain  of  the 
burden  of  our  bodies. 

We  resist  the  normal  efforts  of  the 
stomach  to  digest  and  distribute  nour- 
ishment from  our  food ;  we  resist  the 
normal  action  of  our  lungs  to  take 
oxygen  from  the  air  and  distribute  it  in 
the  blood ;  and  as  for  the  process  of 
resting  —  with  most  of  us  it  is  neces- 
sary to  acquire,  by  voluntary  effort  and 
study,  the  standard  of  rest  that  should 
be  natural  to  every  human  being. 

All  these  contractions  which  inter- 
fere with  the  best  nourishment  of  our 
bodies  through  food  and  air,  and  inter- 
fere with  our  normal  rest,  come  from 
selfish  desires.  It  is  as  if  our  nerves 
were  all  little  fists  grabbing,  like  a  selfish 
child,  for  what  they  want;  and  when 
1 80 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

the  mother  says,  "No,  that  would 
make  my  child  ill,"  the  selfishness  in 
the  baby  tries  all  the  more  to  grab 
what  its  unintelligent  childish  brain  de- 
sires. All  this  selfish  contraction,  when 
it  has  become  habitual,  obscures  our 
standards,  so  that  what  should  be  nor- 
mal to  us  appears  to  be  abnormal. 
We  are  so  far  from  the  true  sense  of  re- 
freshment and  renewal  that  we  have  no 
idea  of  the  possible  growth  from  rest; 
and  yet,  as  some  one  wisely  says : 
"Growth  is  predominantly  a  function 
of  rest.  Work  is  chiefly  an  energy- 
expending  and  tearing-down  process. 
Rest  following  work  is  chiefly  a  building- 
up  and  growing  process.  Work  may 
furnish  the  conditions  under  which  sub- 
sequent growth  may  occur,  but  in  itself 
it  is  destructive.  By  work  we  do  things 
in  the  world,  but  we  do  not  grow  by 
work.  We  grow  during  rest.  Rest  is 
181 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

not  the  only  condition  of  growth,  but  it 
is  one  of  the  essential  conditions. 

"The  best  work  that  we  do  is  not  be- 
gun in  our  offices  or  at  our  desks,  but 
when  we  are  wandering  in  the  woods  or 
sitting  quietly  with  undirected  thoughts. 
From  somewhere  at  such  times  there 
flash  into  our  minds  those  ideas  that 
direct  and  control  our  lives,  visions  of 
how  to  do  that  which  previously  had 
seemed  impossible,  new  aspirations, 
hopes,  and  desires.  Work  is  the  process 
of  realization.  The  careful  balance  and 
the  great  ideas  come  largely  during 
quiet,  and  without  being  sought.  The 
man  who  never  takes  time  to  do  nothing 
will  hardly  do  great  things.  He  will 
hardly  have  epoch-making  or  even  stimu- 
lating ideas. 

"Rest  is  thus  not  merely  in  order  to 
recuperate  for  work.  If  so,  we  should 
rest  only  when  fatigued.  We  need  to 
182 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

do  nothing  at  times  when  we  are  as  well 
as  possible,  when  our  whole  natures 
are  ready  for  their  finest  product.  We 
need  occasionally  to  leave  them  undi- 
rected in  order  that  we  may  receive 
these  messages  by  wireless  from  the 
Unknown.  We  need  to  have  the  in- 
strument working  at  its  greatest  per- 
fection, be  undirected  and  receptive.  I 
am  not  advocating  a  mystic  idea. 

"Rest  is  as  important  as  work. 
Dreams  must  precede  action.  Con- 
centrated art  is  not  art,  and  the  acquir- 
ing of  facts  is  not  growth." 

Our  misunderstanding  of  rest,  and  the 
habit  of  contraction  which  interferes 
with  proper  rest,  digestion,  and  breath- 
ing, interfere  equally  with  our  move- 
ment and  our  work. 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  a  loco- 
motive engine  only  utilizes  nineteen  per 
cent  of  the  fuel  that  it  burns,  the  other 
183 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

eighty -one  per  cent  being,  so  far  as  we 
can  see,  absolutely  wasted.  So  it  is 
with  the  use  of  the  human  body  in  its 
present  degenerate  state,  and  especially 
with  the  American  human  body.  A  few 
days'  careful  observation  will  make  this 
quite  evident,  even  to  one  who  has 
never  thought  of  the  question  before. 
Watch  the  unnecessary  movement  of 
the  heads  or  hands  of  people  talking  or 
reading  aloud,  the  unnecessary  tension 
used  in  walking  and  in  every  other 
movement. 

At  first,  if  you  have  not  thought  of  it 
before,  you  will  see  only  one  or  two  ex- 
amples; but,  as  you  continue  to  ob- 
serve, the  misused  energy  will  become 
more  and  more  evident.  As,  for  in- 
stance, the  fact  that  a  man  who  would 
give  to  the  unobservant  the  impression 
of  perfect  calmness,  if  not  of  perfect 
ease,  is,  while  talking,  constantly  making 
184 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

slight  nervous  motions  of  the  hands  and 
feet. 

It  will  naturally  occur  to  us  to  think, 
"But  I  do  not  wish  to  notice  all  this; 
it  will  annoy  me  to  see  it  in  others,  and 
make  me  unpleasantly  self-conscious  to 
notice  it  in  myself."  So  it  will;  it  will 
make  one  very  unpleasantly  self-con- 
scious at  first,  but  that  is  necessary  to 
the  overcoming  of  the  evil  and  the  drop- 
ping into  a  more  perfect  unconscious- 
ness of  self.  And  in  proof  of  this,  let 
me  turn  for  a  moment  to  the  spiritual 
aspect  of  the  case. 

In  a  little  posthumous  work  on 
Charity,  Emanuel  Swedenborg  says,  "In 
so  far  as  any  one  does  not  take  cog- 
nizance of  and  know  what  sins  are,  he 
does  not  see  but  that  he  is  without 
sins."'  And  again,  "In  so  far  as  any 
one  takes  cognizance  of  and  knows  what 
sins  are,  he  can  see  them  in  himself, 
185 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

confess  them  before  the  Lord,  and  re- 
pent of  them." 

In  another  book  we  read,  "When  it  is 
permitted  man  to  think  the  evils  of  his 
life's  love  even  to  intention,  they  are 
cured  by  spiritual  means  as  diseases  are 
by  natural  means,"  and  "he  who  does 
not  think  above  it  is  m  the  darkness  of 
night  concerning  the  state  of  his  life." 

I  have  heard  an  invalid  who  had  been 
talking  about  herself  for  hours  assert 
positively  that  she  was  not  self-cen- 
tered. I  have  heard  a  man  whose  love 
of  rule  was  evident  in  most  things  that 
he  said  and  did,  say  with  confidence 
that  there  was  one  sin  from  which  he 
was  exempt,  and  that  was  the  desire  to 
rule  over  others.  We  all  know  men  and 
women  with  prominent,  grievous  faults 
of  which  they  are  entirely  ignorant. 
As  we  observe  this  ignorance,  we  are 
filled  with  terror  as  to  what  monstrous 
1 86 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

selfishness  we  may  be  indulging  without 
knowing  it,  and  our  only  protection,  — 
and  that  is  protection  enough,  —  is  a 
willingness  to  acknowledge  where  we  are 
wrong  the  moment  the  wrong  is  brought 
to  our  notice;  and  this  alertness  should 
be  as  active  with  little  sins  as  with  big 
ones. 

As  with  sins  of  the  spirit,  so  with  sins 
of  the  body ;  and  a  misuse  of  nervous 
energy  must  certainly  be  counted  a  sin. 
When  we  use  more  nervous  force  than 
is  necessary  for  one  action,  are  we  not 
stealing  vitality  which  is  intended  to 
give  us  new  strength  for  many  other 
uses  ?  Are  we  not  actually  taking  what 
does  not  belong  to  us  ?  for  only  the  force 
needed  for  the  best  performance  of  the 
action  is  really  ours ;  for  all  our  energy 
is  given  us  in  trust  for  useful  purposes. 
Whatever  we  have  to  do  is  more  per- 
fectly accomplished  by  moving  accord- 
187 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

ing  to  the  laws  of  nature;    superfluous 
effort  only  blurs  and  blunders. 

In  many  cases  of  trouble  the  nervous 
contraction  resulting  from  self -conscious- 
ness is  the  larger  part  of  it  —  and  not 
the  self-consciousness  itself.  People  suf- 
fer from  self-consciousness  in  various 
forms.  They  are  often  prevented  from 
living  usefully  by  this  involuntary  con- 
traction which  comes  whenever  they 
must  appear  before  others,  whereas,  if 
they  could  once  gain  real  freedom  of 
nerves  and  muscles,  what  had  seemed  a 
deep-seated  characteristic  which  must  be 
borne  as  one  of  life's  burdens  would 
entirely  disappear.  The  discovery  and 
true  understanding  of  self-consciousness 
lead  us  at  once  beyond  and  above 
them,  and  we  find  new  pleasure  and  ease 
in  living  out  to  others,  and  for  others. 
A  noble  spirit  is  often  prevented  from 
developing  its  best  powers  of  use  by  the 
188 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

clogging  of  the  physical  channels  through 
which  it  must  act ;  and  it  suffers  be- 
cause, not  recognizing  any  physical  im- 
pediment, the  trouble  seems  to  be  en- 
tirely spiritual  and  so  more  serious. 

Of  course  the  root  of  self-conscious- 
ness is  the  desire  to  appear  well  before 
others,  but  often  when  we  have  put 
away  the  excessive  care  for  appearances, 
the  inherited  contraction  belonging  to  it 
still  remains  with  us ;  then,  if  we  give 
our  attention  to  freeing  ourselves  from 
the  physical  tension,  we  not  only  lib- 
erate the  body,  but  the  spirit  is  thus 
enabled  to  express  itself  more  truly 
in  outward  action ;  moreover  the  freer 
the  body  is,  the  more  sensitively  it 
reflects  the  immediate  mistakes  of  the 
spirit. 

In  this  physical  training  whose  object 
is  to  save  at  least  a  part  of  the  waste  of 
human  energy,  and  to  help  us  to  a  better 
189 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

and  more  economical  management  of 
our  human  engine,  progress  should  be 
steady  but  gradual.  First,  all  force 
must  be  dropped,  the  tension  must  be 
taken  from  our  bodies  entirely,  and  this 
brings  us  physically  as  nearly  to  the 
state  of  a  healthy  baby  as  is  possible. 
But  it  cannot  be  done  all  at  once;  it 
cannot  be  done  with  every  part  of  the 
body  at  once.  The  body  must  be  taken 
piecemeal  —  sometimes  in  one  order, 
sometimes  in  another,  according  to  in- 
dividual needs.  There  are  motions  for 
freeing  the  muscles  connected  with  the 
head ;  and  it  is  surprising  to  find  how 
much  force  we  use  to  hold  our  own 
heads  on,  as  we  may  prove  by  our  in- 
ability to  let  them  drop  down.  Nature 
will  hold  them  on  for  us  much  better 
than  we  can,  and  we  only  hinder  her  by 
trying  to  help.  The  personal  endeavor 
hitherto  has  been  unconscious ;  but  as 
190 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

soon  as  we  become  conscious  of  it, 
how  can  we  cease  trying  until  we  have 
dropped  our  personal  officiousness  to 
that  extent  ? 

In  the  head  is  the  source  of  the  nerv- 
ous system,  and  the  quieting  effect  of 
freeing  it  is  felt  all  over  the  body. 

It  is  not  within  the  province  of  this 
essay  to  describe  the  exercises,  even  if 
they  could  be  written  so  clearly  that 
they  might  be  followed  and  practised, 
which  unfortunately  cannot  be  done. 

When  the  head  has  regained  its  free- 
dom, partially  if  not  entirely,  then  we 
should  go  to  the  rescue  of  the  weakest 
part  of  the  body,  that  is,  that  part  of 
the  body  where  the  largest  portion  of 
wasted  energy  appears  to  be  consumed. 
If  that  is  not  at  once  discerned,  then  the 
hands  and  arms  should  be  freed,  and  the 
fingers,  because  of  their  constant  use, 
are  likely  to  be  more  tense  than  any 
191 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

other  part  of  the  body.  The  parts 
above  the  knuckles,  especially,  often 
seem  as  if  bound  by  steel  wires,  so 
closely  are  they  knit  together  from  a 
too  tense  use  of  the  hand.  The  fingers 
should  be  freed  until  they  can  hang 
from  the  wrists  like  little  bags  of  sand. 
After  that  the  arms  are  brought  back  to 
their  natural  state,  and  made  to  hang 
like  larger  bags  of  sand ;  so  that,  when 
not  in  use,  they  are  perfectly  relaxed,  as 
they  were  meant  to  be,  and  ready  to 
turn  easily,  and  not  rigidly,  to  what- 
ever use  they  need  to  perform.  Then 
the  feet  and  legs  are  trained  to  be  re- 
laxed and  quiet  when  not  in  use,  and  the 
effect  of  this  is  to  bring  a  natural  rhyth- 
mic gait  in  walking.  After  the  feet 
and  legs  come  the  waist  muscles  and 
the  muscles  of  the  chest.  The  waist 
muscles  are  especially  hard  to  relax, 
and  the  unnecessary  pressure  brought 
192 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

to  bear  on  them  in  walking  is,  almost 
without  exception,  very  striking. 

The  most  important  of  all  the  exer- 
cises necessary  to  dropping  contraction 
and  gaining  a  greater  freedom  of  the 
body  are  exercises  in  breathing. 
Swedenborg  says  that  "the  breathing  is 
according  to  the  freedom  of  the  life" 
and  this  assertion  is  quickly  and  easily 
proven  to  be  true  by  a  little  careful  ob- 
servation. In  a  tired,  strained  body  the 
breathing  is  quick  and  hard ;  even  when 
sleeping,  a  nervously  strained  man  will 
show  his  fatigue  in  his  breathing  —  and 
what  a  contrast  it  is  to  the  gentle,  rest- 
ful breathing  of  a  healthy  child.  A 
man  who  is  excited  and  full  of  resent- 
ment, or  some  other  form  of  resistance, 
will  show  it  at  once  in  his  breathing. 
Habitual  resistance  is  reflected  con- 
stantly in  the  breathing,  and  the  habit 
of  unnecessary  tension  in  breathing  keeps 
193 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

us  in  a  state  of  chronic  strain.  "In 
machineries,  any  motion  which  is  super- 
abundant, or  not  turned  to  use,  is 
hurtful  to  the  object  sought,  precisely 
because  motion  always  has  effects,  which 
in  the  latter  case  mix  with  the  intended 
result,  and  confuse  or  disarrange  it. 
This  applies  more  strikingly  to  the  hu- 
man frame  than  to  anything  of  man's 
making.  .  .  .  The  use  of  breathing  is 
to  communicate  motion  to  the  body,  to 
distribute  it  to  the  different  machineries 
or  viscera,  to  enable  them  to  go  to  work 
according  to  their  powers.  .  .  .  For  the 
body  is  a  chain  of  substances  and  organs 
whose  connections  are  so  disposed,  that 
motions  communicated  from  within,  vi- 
brate from  end  to  end,  and  from  side  to 
side,  and  extend  to  the  extremities  of 
the  limbs  before  they  are  absorbed.  .  .  . 
The  plain  consequence  is  that  the  nerves 
and  the  spinal  marrow  are  expanded 
194 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

with  each  inspiration.  Either  that  —  or 
they  resist  the  inspiration,  and  in  this 
case  the  unity  of  the  body  is  at  an 
end.  ...  If  they  are  expanded  or  en- 
larged when  the  lungs  draw  them  out, 
of  course  a  physical  fluid  enters  them 
to  fill  the  space  created,  and  tends  to 
free  the  organs  to  which  they  are  dis- 
tributed. In  this  way  the  nervous  sys- 
tem, the  focus  of  life,  opens  the  frame  at 
the  same  intervals  as  the  lungs,  the 
circumference  of  life ;  the  lungs  being 
simply  the  want  of  living  fluid,  and  the 
nerves  the  corresponding  supply.  This 
is  an  organic  cooperation  between  ef- 
fect and  cause,  whereby  the  highest 
purposes  of  the  organization  are 
seconded  most  absolutely,  and  yet  most 
freely,  by  the  lowest."  Or,  to  simplify 
it,  the  lungs  supply  the  brain  with 
power  through  the  oxygen,  which  flows 
into  the  lungs  and  is  taken  up  there  by 
195 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

the  blood  and  carried  to  the  brain,  and 
there  is  therefore  a  motion  in  the  brain 
with  every  inhalation  and  exhalation  of 
the  lungs.  When  we  inhale,  the  blood 
comes  from  the  brain  to  be  supplied 
with  oxygen ;  as  we  exhale,  the  blood 
returns  to  the  brain  with  its  new  supply 
of  life.  If  the  breathing  is  quick  and 
sharp  and  full  of  unnecessary  effort, 
the  motion  of  the  brain  is  of  course 
strained.  If  the  breathing  is  quiet  and 
steady  and  gentle,  with  no  resistance  to 
any  inspiration,  the  motion  of  the  brain 
is  quiet  and  restful  and  strengthening. 
If  we  learn  to  breathe  quietly,  it  will 
help  us  to  think  quietly,  and  wherever 
we  are  thinking  quietly  we  are  breathing 
quietly. 

"By  means  of  the  lungs,  which  keep 

everything  on  the  move,  the  man  is  ever 

ready   for   living   operations.     Thus   the 

quickness  of  the  body's  service  depends 

196 


THE  HEART  OP  GOOD  HEALTH 

entirely  upon  its  response  to  the  anima- 
tion of  the  lungs."  When  motion  in 
the  body,  —  and  especially  in  the  brain, 
—  has  become  habitually  sharp  and  un- 
quiet and  strained,  we  must  consciously 
and  with  steady  attention  work  to  bring 
it  back  to  rhythm.  Even  when  we  ap- 
preciate the  strength  of  quiet  thinking 
and  aim  directly  to  gain  it,  we  find  our- 
selves terribly  impeded  by  the  habitual 
strain  of  quick,  irregular  breathing  which 
is  so  fixed  upon  us  that  we  must  give  our 
attention  first  to  regulating  the  physical 
machine  before  we  can  make  it  a  good 
channel  for  the  better  work  of  our 
minds.  We  may  begin  to  think  quietly, 
and  yet  old,  unquiet  habits  which  have 
impressed  themselves  upon  our  bodies 
will  react  again  and  will  actually  dis- 
turb our  minds.  Dead  deposits  made 
by  old  habits  can  make  us  very  great 
trouble  if  we  do  not  recognize  them  as 
197 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

such  and  go  to  work  with  a  will  to  re- 
lease ourselves  from  the  nervous  tension 
which  those  habits  have  made.  The 
body  is  of  no  importance,  comparatively, 
when  we  know  how  to  use  it,  but  it  is 
of  very  great  importance  as  an  impedi- 
ment to  our  best  expression  if  we  mis- 
use it  and  allow  it  to  establish  bad 
habits.  It  will  or  should  claim  our 
attention  then  until  it  has  become  what 
it  was  intended  to  be  —  a  healthy  ani- 
mal, absolutely  obedient  to  the  soul 
that  occupies  it. 

Long,  quiet,  steady  breaths  practised 
at  regular  intervals,  even  only  once,  and 
for  not  more  than  half  an  hour,  every 
day,  will  produce  a  very  happy  change 
in  bringing  us  toward  unconscious  rest- 
ful breathing.  We  should  aim  to  take 
the  breath  in  as  gently  as  a  fog  creeps 
in  from  the  sea,  and  to  feel  more  as  if 
we  were  letting  it  come  in  than  as  if  we 
198 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

were  drawing  it  in  ourselves.  That 
takes  away  the  nervous  resistance  to 
inspiration,  which  is  implanted  in  us  by 
other  resistances,  mental  and  physical. 
In  letting  our  breath  out  we  should  feel 
ourselves  relax  inside  with  a  sense  of 
rest,  and  let  the  breath  go  out  of  us  as 
the  air  goes  out  of  little  children's  bal- 
loons when  it  is  allowed  to  escape.  We 
should  feel  as  we  might  if  we  were 
lying  in  the  snow,  and  every  time  we 
let  the  breath  out  we  settled  back — in- 
voluntarily —  and  made  a  deeper  im- 
pression in  the  snowbank  on  which  we 
were  lying. 

After  every  long,  deep  breath  the 
lungs  will  expand  and  contract  of  them- 
selves in  breaths  which  at  first  are  very 
full  and  gradually  decrease  until  they 
have  settled  to  an  average  length  — 
and  every  time  we  allow  the  lungs  to 
have  their  own  way  after  a  very  deep 
199 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

inhalation,  the  final  breath  reached  will 
be  nearer  the  normal,  both  in  length 
and  in  force.  So  it  is  if  we  get  out  of 
breath  in  climbing  a  mountain,  —  if  we 
will  stop  and  wait  and  let  our  lungs 
breathe  as  hard  as  they  want  to  — 
even  assist  them  by  emphasizing  the 
hard  breathing  at  first  and  then  letting 
them  go  as  they  please,  we  will  find 
that  when  our  "second  breath"  comes, 
it  will  be  fuller,  more  quiet,  and  more 
vigorous  because  we  have  let  the  lungs 
find  it  for  themselves  and  not  repressed 
their  motion. 

Conscious,  quiet,  rhythmic  breathing 
while  we  are  lying  or  sitting  still  is  also 
very  helpful  toward  bringing  the  brain 
and  the  nerves  into  good  condition. 
Sometimes  we  can  take  regular  long  — 
not  very  long  —  breaths,  sometimes 
short,  like  a  baby  asleep.  The  sense  of 
a  gentle  rhythm  of  motion  which  grows 
200 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

upon  us  as  we  give  our  attention  to  it 
is  especially  useful.  Some  professional 
physical  trainer  has  said  that  our  un- 
conscious, everyday  breathing  should  be 
as  slow  as  six  breaths  to  a  minute.  This 
seems  very  slow  when  we  try  it,  and,  al- 
though it  is  restful  and  strengthening  for 
a  while,  it  certainly  seems  somewhat 
exaggerated  as  a  constant  habit.  But 
there  is  no  doubt  that  our  habitual 
breathing  should  be  much  slower  than 
it  usually  is,  and  that  to  establish  the 
habit  of  slow  and  quiet  breathing  would 
help  us  greatly  to  gain  a  habit  of  quiet, 
wise  thinking. 

The  breathing  governs  the  most  ex- 
pressive power  of  the  human  body,  the 
human  voice.  Nervous  and  muscular 
contractions  not  only  interfere  with  the 
best  tones  of  the  voice,  physically ;  they 
often  make  it  impossible  to  express  truly 
what  is  in  our  hearts.  We  think  and 
201 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

feel  strongly,  and  sometimes  the  very 
contractions  produced  by  that  feeling 
make  it  impossible  for  us  to  express  the 
feeling  itself.  A  German  teacher  who 
had  a  remarkable  knowledge  and  ap- 
preciation of  the  possibility  of  the  voice 
said  that  he  knew  the  "soul"  of  the 
voice  was  in  the  region  of  the  diaphragm 
and  "with  you,"  he  said,  "you  Ameri- 
cans, you  squeeze  the  life  from  the  word 
in  your  throats  and  it  is  born  dead." 
Our  thoughts  are  expressed  by  our  words, 
but  the  feeling  which  prompts  the 
thoughts  is  expressed  in  the  tones  of 
our  voice.  When  our  habitual  state  of 
feeling  has  kept  our  bodies  in  constant 
contraction,  it  is  impossible  for  any  im- 
mediate feeling  to  break  through  the 
tension  caused  by  that  habitual  con- 
traction, no  matter  how  strong  and  free 
the  feeling  may  be. 

It    is    orderly    while    we    are    in    this 
202 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

world  that  the  body  should  be  under- 
going a  process  of  regeneration  with  the 
soul,  for  the  deposits  of  strain  left  in  an 
unregenerated  body  make  a  barrier  to 
the  growth  and  external  expression  of  a 
truly  growing  soul.  If  these  deposits 
were  a  matter  of  one  man's  lifetime,  the 
freedom  gained  in  the  character  might 
break  through  them,  and  so  obviate  the 
necessity  of  thinking  of  the  body  any 
more  than  to  fulfil  the  conditions  of 
breathing  plenty  of  fresh  air  and  eating 
only  nourishing  food.  These  deposits  of 
contraction,  however,  have  come  not 
only  from  a  man's  personal  habits,  but 
from  his  grandfather  and  his  great- 
grandfather, and  probably  from  many 
generations  back,  so  that  a  man's  soul 
has  a  prison  of  a  body  from  the  time  of 
his  early  childhood.  The  compensation 
for  the  necessity  of  working  to  bring 
the  body  to  a  state  of  obedience  to  a 
203 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

growing  soul  is  that  the  work  for  the 
body  is  so  exactly  in  accordance  with 
the  work  for  the  soul  that  nothing 
permanent  or  eternal  is  lost  by  the 
physical  training,  in  spite  of  our  leaving 
the  body  behind  when  we  go  from  this 
world  to  the  next. 

After  exercises  in  deep  breathing,  tak- 
ing long  and  full  breaths,  and  allowing 
the  air  to  escape  by  the  natural  elas- 
ticity of  the  lungs,  without  forcing  of 
any  kind,  the  whole  body  should  be 
freed  from  all  unnecessary  tension ;  it 
must  be  prepared  to  relax  at  any  time, 
and  so  gain  perfect  rest.  Thus  the  first 
new  life  felt  in  the  regenerating  body 
will  often  come  from  the  refreshment  of 
a  natural  sleep. 

For  an  exquisite  example  of  what  this 

may  be,   lift  a  healthy,   sleeping  baby ; 

first  its  head,  then  its  arms,  its  legs,  and 

finally,  without  waking  it,  hold  its  little 

204 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

body  on  your  two  widely  spread  hands. 
There  is  no  more  beautiful  illustration 
in  the  world  of  what  this  regeneration 
of  the  body  should  be,  a  state  of  freedom 
for  the  body  which  is  as  necessary  and 
as  helpful  on  the  material  plane  as  the 
regeneration  of  the  soul  on  the  spiritual 
plane.  The  process  is  a  long,  often  a 
very  long  one,  and,  unless  the  end  is 
constantly  kept  in  view,  sometimes 
tedious,  but  well  worth  close,  and  even 
severe,  persistence. 

Action  and  reaction  are  great  laws 
throughout  the  universe,  and  every- 
where in  nature  the  action  and  reaction 
are  equal,  bringing  perfect  equilibrium, 
perfect  rhythm.  In  a  normal  man  the 
action  and  reaction  of  the  involuntary 
muscles  are  equal ;  but,  alas,  not  so 
with  the  voluntary  muscles ;  their  action 
exceeds  their  reaction  far  too  often. 
And  so  they  must  be  trained  first  to 
205 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

rest,  and  then  become  ready  for  a  more 
perfect  and  natural  action.  This  is  the 
more  interesting  part  of  the  physical 
training.  It  leads  to  grace,  of  course, 
for  it  leads  to  purely  natural  movement, 
and  all  nature  is  graceful. 

It  is  equilibrium  that  we  are  really 
aiming  at.  The  body  is  made  so  that 
its  normal  balance  is  most  exquisite, 
and,  when  once  we  find  the  poise  given 
us  by  nature,  and  have  learnt  to  pre- 
serve the  power  of  rhythmic  motion 
which  is  our  natural  birthright,  the  per- 
fect coordination  of  the  muscles  causes 
so  quick  and  true  a  response  of  the  body 
to  the  mind,  as  to  bring  us  not  only  to 
a  clearer  appreciation  of  our  wonderful 
mechanism,  but  also  to  enable  us  to  for- 
get it  entirely. 

The  first  law  of  motion  is  beautifully 
clear  in  dealing  with  spiritual  things. 
In  the  "Laws  of  the  Divine  Providence" 
206 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

Swedenborg  says,  "Nothing  exists,  sub- 
sists, is  acted  upon  or  moved  by  itself, 
but  by  some  other  being  or  agent; 
whence  it  follows  that  everything  exists, 
subsists,  is  acted  upon  and  moved  by 
the  First  Being,  who  has  no  origin  from 
another,  but  is  in  Himself  the  living 
force  which  is  life."  This  is  perfectly 
expressed  on  the  plane  of  matter  by  the 
law  of  movement  in  the  human  body  — 
that  every  agent  is  moved  from  some- 
thing prior  to  it.  To  express  it  simply, 
if  not  quite  scientifically,  the  head  is 
moved  from  the  muscles  of  the  neck, 
the  hand  moves  from  the  wrist,  the 
forearm  from  the  upper  arm,  the  whole 
arm  from  the  shoulder,  the  foot  from  the 
ankle,  the  lower  leg  from  the  upper,  and 
the  whole  leg  from  the  hip. 

The    whole    body    should    be    moved 
from  an  imaginary  centre  about  at  the 
pit  of  the  stomach.     It  is  as  if  the  brain 
207 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

were  in  that  centre,  and  to  watch  a 
movement  begin  there  and  transmit 
itself  successively  throughout  the  body 
is  a  delight.  The  coordination  is  ex- 
quisite and  powerful  in  its  effect. 

This  perfectly  harmonious  movement 
was  the  foundation  of  oriental  dancing, 
-  that  dancing  which  has  now  degen- 
erated into  a  hell  diametrically  opposite 
to  what  must  in  ancient  times  have 
been  the  heaven  of  motion.  It  is  now 
a  lost  art  so  far  as  its  expression  is  con- 
cerned, but  it  is  not  a  lost  art  inasmuch 
as  the  knowledge  of  it  can  be  found 
and  used,  if  any  one  really  desires  to  do 
so.  It  would  be  a  wonderful,  artistic 
revelation  if  this  dancing  could  be  re- 
vived in  all  its  purity. 

The  more  truly  the  body  is  regen- 
erated, the  more  exquisite  is  the  coor- 
dination of  every  movement. 

The  law  of  action  and  reaction  is,  of 
208 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

course,  followed  perfectly  in  natural  mo- 
tion. Take  walking,  for  instance.  The 
muscles  used  in  resting  upon  the  leg  are 
not  the  same  as  those  used  in  swinging 
it  forward.  Consequently,  while  the 
muscles  of  the  hip  are  used  in  the  left 
leg,  in  the  right  they  are  resting,  and 
vice  versa.  Every  articulation  should  be 
trained  to  use  to  its  fullest  natural 
extent,  and  with  only  the  force  needed 
to  move  it.  And  the  force  needed  de- 
creases to  a  degree  that  seems  wonder- 
ful in  itself,  and  still  more  wonderful  as 
we  begin  to  realize  the  way  in  which  we 
have  been  thumping  (I  use  the  expres- 
sion advisedly)  upon  an  exquisite  instru- 
ment that  will  respond  to  a  more  deli- 
cate touch  than  we  are  able  to  produce. 
It  would  of  course  be  impossible  to  take 
the  body  muscle  by  muscle  and  rear- 
range it,  and,  if  it  were  possible,  we 
would  not  wish  to  do  so.  All  we  need 
209 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

to  do  is  to  shun  the  contractions  that 
we  see,  to  make  ourselves  physically  free 
and  clean;  then  nature  comes  and  rear- 
ranges us,  and  in  the  exercises,  which 
are  of  course  most  general,  the  muscles 
work  in  perfect  harmony  because  they 
are  left  in  their  natural  order  and  rela- 
tion to  each  other.  Thus  we  learn  how 
to  allow  the  body  to  be  perfectly  pas- 
sive so  that  it  may  react  to  the  activity 
of  the  mind ;  and  thus  the  mind  itself 
should  know  how  to  be  passive  in  order 
to  react  to  the  activity  of  the  Divine 
mind. 

It  is  wonderful  to  see  how  much  more 
perfectly  artistic  expression  can  be  se- 
cured by  means  of  the  physical  freedom 
than  by  the  greatest  effort  of  contrac- 
tion ;  for  physical  freedom  —  in  the  art 
of  acting,  for  instance  —  serves  as  a 
pliable  and  sympathetic  medium  through 
which  an  artistic  conception  can  reveal 
210 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

itself,  whereas,  with  contracted  nerves 
and  muscles,  the  conception  has  to  be 
laboriously  and  painfully  manufactured. 
The  nerves  should  be  the  vehicles  of 
expression,  not  its  absorbers ;  and  when 
they  are  free  to  be  clear  transmitters, 
the  result  of  powerful  expression  is  new 
strength,  instead  of  the  nervous,  trem- 
bling fatigue  which  too  often  comes  after 
really  able  effort. 

The  Divine  life  is  in  all  that  is  true 
and  best  in  every  art,  indeed  it  is  the 
source  of  all  art ;  and,  as  we  learn  to 
quiet  the  physical  and  mental  tension 
which  comes  from  unwholesome  excite- 
ment, it  is  wonderful  to  see  how  we  are 
lifted,  by  the  power  of  the  art,  to  a 
more  living  interest  in  it,  to  a  growing 
appreciation  of  how  much  greater  the 
art  is  than  we  are,  and  how  our  special 
work  is  only  to  remove  obstructions,  so 
that  the  art  may  express  itself  more 

211 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

perfectly  through  us.  This  means  noth- 
ing unless  practically  applied ;  and,  when 
it  is  made  the  daily  text  for  artistic 
work,  in  whatever  form,  there  comes 
a  realization  of  what  the  regeneration  of 
body  and  soul  might  mean  to  the  cause 
of  true  beauty  and  power  in  art. 

An  illustration  of  the  natural  goal  to 
be  reached  can  hardly  be  given  more 
concisely  than  Mr.  Ruskin  gives  it : 
"Is  not  the  evidence  of  ease  on  the  very 
front  of  all  the  greatest  works  in  exis- 
tence ?  Do  they  not  plainly  say  to  us 
not  'there  has  been  a  great  effort  here', 
but  *  there  has  been  a  great  power  here '  ? 
It  is  not  the  weariness  of  mortality,  but 
the  strength  of  Divinity  that  we  have  to 
recognize  in  all  mighty  things ;  and  that 
is  just  what  we  now  never  recognize, 
but  think  that  we  are  to  do  great 
things  by  help  of  iron  bars  and  perspi- 
ration ;  alas !  we  shall  do  nothing  that 
212 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

way,  but  lose  some  pounds  of  our  own 
weight." 

In  his  book  on  "Rational  Psy- 
chology", Swedenborg  beautifully  de- 
scribes the  state  of  the  regenerate  body. 
He  says :  — 

"Patience  also  is  written  in  the  body; 
something  mild  and  patient  shines  forth 
from  the  countenance,  from  the  very 
sound  of  the  speech,  and  so  far  as  it 
appertains  to  the  mind,  from  the  dis- 
course also.  The  face  is  serene,  smiling, 
even  while  others  burn;  the  blood  is 
softer,  healthier,  warm  but  not  burning, 
full  of  vital  heat  but  not  concreted  into 
fibers ;  the  pulse  is  lighter  and  more 
constant,  the  bile  is  not  dark  but  more 
yellow  in  color,  the  arteries  more  yielding, 
the  fibers  tender,  the  organs  more  vigorous 
and  ready  to  obey  the  dictates  of  the  mind, 
and  in  all  parts  there  is  manifest  a 
pleasing  grace,  if  not  beauty.  In  a 
213 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

word,  each  particular  part  of  the  body 
is  patient ;  for  as  is  the  mind  and  the 
animus,  such  is  the  state  of  the  most 
particular  parts  of  the  whole  body,  since 
the  latter  conforms  to  the  image  and 
nature  of  its  soul.  If  otherwise,  it  is  a  sign 
that  the  mind  is  injured  from  some  cause. 
"  Patience,  so  far  as  it  is  the  tranquil 
and  serene  state  of  the  mind,  free  from 
disturbance  by  the  affections  of  the 
animus,  is  itself  the  most  perfect  state ; 
for  the  mind  is,  in  this  state,  left  to  itself, 
has  time  for  its  own  operations,  regards 
its  reasons  more  interiorly,  and  forms  its 
judgments  more  sincerely,  and  out  of 
these  it  selects  the  true,  the  better,  and 
more  fitting,  and  remits  them  into  its 
will,  which  then  is  not  possessed  with 
the  tumult  of  natural  desires.  Thus 
enjoying  an  almost  perfect  liberty,  it 
holds  the  animus  subject  to  itself  as  if 
in  chains,  nor  does  it  permit  it  to  wander 
214 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

beyond  the  limits  of  its  own  choice. 
Thus  also  it  commands  the  actions  of 
its  body,  and  more  purely  and  intelli- 
gently receives  and  contemplates  its  sen- 
sations. When  the  mind  is  thus  left 
to  itself,  and  neither  corporeal  or  mun- 
dane things  nor  the  heat  thence  arising 
disturbs  its  ease,  then  it  enjoys  the  in- 
most fellowship  with  its  pure  intellectory 
or  the  soul,  and  suffers  natural  and 
spiritual  truths  to  flow  in;  for  it  is  only 
the  corporeal  affections  and  desires  of 
the  animus  which  obscure  and  pervert 
the  intellectual  ideas  of  the  mind. 
Hence  it  is  that  the  mind,  in  its  state  of 
patience  or  tranquillity,  is  cold  in  its 
circulation  as  compared  with  the  heats 
of  the  animus  and  thence  of  the  body, 
but  very  full  of  love  or  of  the  more  pure 
and  perfect  life.  For  that  there  be  any 
mind  it  must  be  warmed  with  a  certain 
love,  but  the  purer  this  is,  the  purer  is 
215 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

the  mind,  because  the  better  is  the  life. 
From  this  state  the  mind  regards  the 
lower  loves  and  those  purely  corporeal 
as  infantile  sports  or  as  insane,  and  the 
more  so  as  they  are  believed  to  be  wise. 
Thus  witnessing  these  it  does  not  be- 
come heated  and  angered,  but  it  pities, 
condoles,  pardons,  tries  to  amend,  re- 
joices in  its  success,  bears  its  injuries  as 
a  mother  those  inflicted  by  her  child, 
for  it  embraces  all  in  its  love,  while  it 
hates  vices.  Patience,  therefore,  may 
well  exist  without  anger,  but  it  is  not 
without  its  zeal  by  which  it  defends,  al- 
though with  moderation,  its  truths. 
The  mind  is  never  disturbed  by  such  a 
fire,  still  less  extinguished,  but  is  re- 
freshed, for  this  agrees  with  its  nature. 
For  the  rational  mind,  the  more  it  is 
liberated  from  impure  fires,  the  more  it 
burns  with  the  pure  fire  which  is  mild  and 
does  not  rage,  but  restores  its  state. 
216 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

"Such  patience,  which  is  the  moder- 
ator of  the  passions  of  the  animus,  is 
rarely  inborn,  for  every  one  has  an  in- 
clination to  certain  affections  of  the 
mind,  but  with  age  and  with  the  judg- 
ment it  grows,  and  especially  is  it  per- 
fected by  its  own  exercise;  but  that 
which  is  genuine  does  not  exist  without 
the  truths  of  religion  and  the  principles 
of  piety,  nor  without  violence  done  to 
the  natures  of  the  animus  and  the  body. 
Misfortune  even,  and  sickness,  which 
repress  the  fervor  of  the  blood  and  the 
spirits,  are  also  frequently  the  causes  of 
this  patience. 

"The  character  of  impatience  may  be 
inferred  from  this  description  of  patience, 
for  it  is  of  the  rational  mind,  which  de- 
sires ends,  while  the  end  is  hindered  or 
obstructed  by  intervening  obstacles  or  by 
the  ideas  of  impossibilities,  which  are 
so  many  resistances,  lest  the  will  should 
217 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

break  forth  into  acts.  Hence  the  ani- 
mus which  desires  is  tortured,  and  the 
body  is  distressed  and  the  mind  regards 
single  moments  as  long  delays.  Thus 
the  more  ardent  is  the  animus,  the 
greater  is  the  impatience;  the  more 
tranquil  the  mind,  the  less  it  is.  Least 
of  all  is  the  impatience  of  those  who 
commit  their  fortunes  to  the  Divine 
Providence." 

By  shunning  the  physical  contractions 
made  by  wrong  inherited  and  personal 
habits,  we  bring  the  body  into  a  state 
where  it  can  more  immediately  respond 
to  the  active  patience  of  the  soul. 

And  do  we  not  express  a  desire  for 
the  physical  regeneration  when  we  pray, 
'Thy  will  be  done  on  earth,  as  it  is  in 
heaven  "  ? 

As  the  new  life  of  the  soul  comes 
from  a  daily  growing  realization  that  we 
are  only  forms  for  the  reception  of  the 
218 


THE  HEART  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 

Divine  life,  that  all  we  can  do  is  to  shun 
evils  as  of  ourselves,  acknowledging  that 
the  power  to  do  so  is  from  the  Lord,  so 
the  new  life  of  the  body  comes  from 
shunning  all  things  that  would  interfere 
with  its  perfect  mechanism,  in  order  to 
place  it  in  harmony  with  the  Lord's 
natural  laws ;  and  then  it  is  the  Lord, 
through  these  laws,  who  keeps  us  in  phys- 
ical order.  And  again,  as  we  feel  that 
every  action  of  the  soul  is  from  a  power 
above  or  beyond  it,  there  is  a  keen 
pleasure  in  seeing  the  law  carried  out 
externally  in  every  motion  of  the  body. 

The  soul  can  be  regenerated  and  the 
body  remain  disorderly;  the  body  can 
be  trained  to  fine  physical  life  and 
action,  and  the  soul  remain  unregenerate ; 
but  certainly  the  fulness  of  life  must 
come  from  a  more  perfect  harmony  of 
the  body  with  the  soul. 

So  long  as  the  soul  needs  the  body  at 
219 


NERVES  AND  THE  WAR 

all,  it  must  be  of  inestimable  impor- 
tance that  the  body  should  conform  to 
the  pure  laws  of  nature  by  shunning 
physical  evils,  just  as  it  is  that  the  soul 
should  be  born  again  through  shunning 
spiritual  evils.  The  life  of  both  comes 
from  looking  to  the  Lord. 

Thus,  by  shunning  obstructions  to  the 
working  of  natural  laws,  do  we  bring 
our  bodies  voluntarily  back  again  to  the 
child  state  into  which  they  were  born. 
Through  realizing  a  new  life  on  the 
physical  plane,  we  come  to  a  deeper  ap- 
preciation of  the  breadth  and  power, 
both  physical  and  spiritual,  of  the  law 
that  says,  "Except  ye  be  converted  and 
become  as  little  children,  ye  shall  not 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 

Thus  may  we  realize  the  never-end- 
ing difference  between  the  innocence  of 
ignorance  and  the  innocence  of  wisdom. 

THE  END 


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